The Lord Chancellor: Leave of Absence

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, before business begins, may I take the opportunity to inform the House that I will be undertaking a personal engagement on 21 December? Accordingly, I trust that the House will grant me leave of absence.

Terrorism

Lord Judd: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What is their assessment of progress in winning hearts and minds in the international action to combat global terrorism.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, varied. Although we condemn the activities of Al'Qaeda and other terrorist groups, we also recognise that actual and perceived injustices, poverty, economic and political exclusion and religious intolerance provide fertile soil in which terrorism can grow. We are endeavouring to tackle these through dialogue on economic progress, education, human rights, democracy and the rule of law. Most recently, the forum for the future initiative is a clear example of positive movement in these areas.

Lord Judd: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply. Does she not agree that the calculating minds behind terrorism succeed only if they have a climate of ambivalence and alienation in which to operate? Is it not therefore essential that, whatever control mechanisms need to be in place, the really tough challenge is this business of winning hearts and minds? In that context, will my noble friend assure the House that top of the Government's priority remains the need to bring the iniquities of Guantanamo Bay to a conclusion, rapidly?
	It is also essential to ensure that in our own administration of immigration, asylum and community policy the dignity and self respect of those being controlled are of paramount importance all the time. We must not add to the legions of disillusioned on whom the terrorists can prey.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, this is a complicated question and to be perfectly frank, this is the sort of issue that lends itself to a full-scale debate in your Lordships' House. However, let me do my best to deal with the main points.
	My noble friend says that the calculating minds behind terrorism succeed where there is a climate of ambivalence. I do not think that that is true. They flourish when some people who have truly evil intent manage to get hold of the instruments by which they cause death and destruction on a large scale. I put it to my noble friend that with the episode of 9/11 there was not so much an ambivalent climate as an opportunity.
	My noble friend can say, as he does, "Ah, but thereafter that allows the climate to grow and terrorism to take root". Of course, the issues of Guantanamo, immigration and asylum must be dealt with sensitively, but I travel extensively in the Middle East and the people who tell me that they have problems with growing terrorism do not cite any of those issues to me. They cite issues about economic progress and human rights and, I am bound to say, about the Middle East peace process. Therefore, although I agree with my noble friend that it is terribly important to get behind these issues, I cannot agree with the detail of his analysis.

Lord Steel of Aikwood: My Lords, bearing in mind what the Minister has just said and the words of President Musharraf recently in Britain, will she accept that one complaint has been about the softly-softly approach taken by Western governments to some of the activities of Mr Sharon's Government, especially the rapacious route of the security wall? Does she hope for a change if Mr Shimon Peres and his party enter the Israeli Government?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I do not think that we have been as softly-softly as the noble Lord seems to imply in his question. We put tough points to the Israeli Government about the route of the barrier. I have put very tough points to them about the ways in which occupation has been dealt with and the checkpoints operate. Israel has high aspirations on human rights, but sadly sometimes falls short of those aspirations. I put those points and I put them very robustly, so I cannot accept that there is a softly-softly attitude. We need to get on better terms in an international dialogue over this issue, which I believe is one of the excuses used—I do not say that it is just cause—for international terrorism.

Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, can anything be done to restore the safe feeling of the international aid agencies, which have been so disillusioned recently? In the past, no matter how severe the conflict, people seemed to welcome international NGOs and aid agencies which came to help the poor people and those suffering terribly from these conditions. Recently, we have seen such occasions where people from these agencies have been forced to withdraw from areas of conflict.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, there is a great deal in what the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, says, especially in Iraq, where we have seen terrorists making a real effort to target those who are trying to bring aid and succour to areas where much needed help has been wanting and where the terrorists target certain international organisations. But many aid agencies do keep going in quite appallingly difficult circumstances—in Sudan, for example, which we recently discussed in your Lordships' House. Many also carry on in difficult circumstances in certain parts of Africa, so let us not for a moment imply that the aid agencies are not carrying out their valuable work very courageously. However, in some areas where aid agencies are specifically the targets, yes indeed, it has had a deleterious effect.

The Lord Bishop of Oxford: My Lords, as regards the Minister's first reply that countering terrorism is primarily a matter of winning hearts and minds and of addressing the underlying causes of terrorism, does she agree that the phrase "war against terrorism" is extremely misleading and skews the perspective in which people see this issue?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I think that the right reverend Prelate has misunderstood me. Hearts and minds are enormously important in this battle but there is also a tougher side to our response on terrorism; let us not forget it. I refer to increased efforts regarding gathering intelligence on terrorism; a deepening of cross-departmental working relationships on counter terrorism within our own set-up in this country; developing a model on counter terrorism that many of our allies are now putting in place in their own countries; and developing broader international networks on terrorism. The fact is this is a brutal, nasty business and we cannot just approach it through winning hearts and minds. Sadly, we must sometimes adopt a fairly brutal response because the security of our own people is of paramount importance.

Lord Rea: My Lords—

Lord Wright of Richmond: My Lords—

Baroness Amos: It is the turn of the Cross Benches.

Lord Wright of Richmond: My Lords, does the Minister agree that one way of winning hearts and minds is to be seen to tackle the many human rights abuses which are by no means confined to Middle East countries, and that the emphasis should be on human rights and not on trying to impose strange and unfamiliar systems of government on other countries?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I agree with what the noble Lord has said. That is why we have sought partnerships—most recently in Rabat this weekend—with the countries of the broader Middle East. However, the noble Lord is quite right; the problems extend far beyond that area. This is not a question of imposition but of forming much needed partnerships in many areas. That is why I referred to economic growth, education, democracy and rule of law issues and, of course, the all-important question of human rights.

Minimum Wage

Lord Rosser: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What representations they have received calling for the abolition of the national minimum wage since its introduction.

Lord Triesman: My Lords, the Government have not received any recent representations calling for the abolition of the minimum wage.

Lord Rosser: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that response.
	Bearing in mind that the major employers' federations and confederations, along with the Official Opposition, opposed a national minimum wage by scaremongering about job losses, does my noble friend take it that the lack of continued advocacy against a national minimum wage is an admission by all those organisations that not only were they just plain wrong but also that they failed the up to 1.9 million who have benefited both from the introduction of the national minimum wage and subsequent upratings?
	In addition—

Noble Lords: Reading!

Lord Rosser: Does he share my suspicion that, since the Official Opposition also shamefully abolished the wages councils in 1993, the national minimum wage would at best simply be allowed to wither on the vine if the party opposite ever won power again?
	Finally—

Noble Lords: Order!

Lord Rosser: Will my noble friend draw to the attention of the Low Pay Commission that, in assessing representations made to it on the future level of the national minimum wage, it is the less than—

Noble Lords: Order!

Baroness Amos: My Lords, perhaps we should let the noble Lord finish his question and then get the answer.

The Countess of Mar: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Baroness, but the Standing Orders state that at Question Time two questions may be asked.

Noble Lords: And no reading!

Lord Rosser: My Lords, if I can finish the question.

Noble Lords: No. Order!

Lord Rosser: My Lords, will my noble friend draw to the attention of the Low Pay Commission that, in assessing—

Baroness Amos: My Lords, we really would move on much more quickly if we allowed the noble Lord to finish his question.

Lord Rosser: My Lords, will my noble friend draw to the attention of the Low Pay Commission representations made to it on the future level of the national minimum wage, as it is the less than highly paid economists at the TUC whose economic judgment and representations on this issue have so far proved to be the most reliable and accurate?

Lord Marsh: My Lords, can I beg to move that the noble Lord be no longer heard?

Lord Triesman: My Lords, I hope that was not a reference to me. With the agreement of the House I shall reply to the first two points. The minimum wage is a flagship policy for this Government and has been in place since April 1999. It is now supported by all major parties but it was opposed by many organisations and political parties before it was introduced, as my noble friend Lord Rosser said. Many of them predicted economic catastrophe. I have reread some of the views expressed at that time. Mr Michael Howard said:
	"I shall continue to take every opportunity to point out the damage which the statutory minimum wage would cause. Labour's plans could cost up to 2 million jobs in Britain".
	The reality, of course, has been the opposite. Jobs have increased in number, job security has increased and some disastrously poorly paid people are now earning a decent living.

Lord Russell-Johnston: My Lords, has the Minister seen the article in today's Independent which suggests that many firms circumvent the minimum wage by getting women to work at lower than minimum wage rates at home, and that this is encouraged by the large stores? Do the Government propose to do anything about that?

Lord Triesman: My Lords, I have seen the argument advanced in the Independent. It draws to everyone's attention that many of the most serious problems are encountered by women workers. Much of the policy was intended to deal with that problem. Many of them are home workers, receiving very low wages from what I can describe only as unscrupulous employers who are breaking the regulations by paying low piece rates that bear no relationship to the minimum wage.
	On 1 October 2004, the Government introduced new regulations to the effect that employers must pay their workers a minimum wage for every hour that they work, or a fair piece rate initially set at 100 per cent of the minimum wage. There will be ruthless regulation and inspection of this. Before people take objection to the notion of inspection and regulation as overbearing, the problem must be got right.

Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, perhaps we could come back to the question of the national minimum wage and disregard the history lesson.

Noble Lords: Oh!

Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, I did not deny the history lesson; I said that we ought to disregard it. The fact is that the national minimum wage is rising at a considerable multiple of the inflation rate. What assessment have the Government made of the impact of this over time, and do they intend to give any advice to the Low Pay Commission as a consequence?

Lord Triesman: My Lords, the core objective in raising pay for low-paid workers was that it should not adversely affect their employment prospects. The commission has noted, throughout what I think have been several years of quite exceptional work, that business has expressed concerns over the impact of significant increases in the minimum wage. It has said that it will look at the impact of those increases on the sectors affected in its next report.
	When it presents its next report to the Government, which will be at the end of February 2005, it must be a matter for the commission, without interference, to ensure that the levels of the national minimum rate and the recommendations for change are commensurate with making sure that jobs are protected. The commission has done that job exceptionally well; I cannot believe that it will fail this year, having succeeded in past years. However, if it is thought that it has failed, I have no doubt that we will have a debate on the matter.

Baroness Prosser: My Lords, I declare an interest in this matter, as a serving member of the Low Pay Commission. I wonder whether my noble friend is aware of the variety of ways in which the Low Pay Commission gathers evidence before determining the recommendation to the Prime Minister on the level of the national minimum wage. For example, we take account of—

Noble Lords: Question!

Baroness Prosser: My Lords, for example, we take account, of course, of economic and labour market data. It has become quite clear that the national minimum wage is not the burden that some people seem to think. By rewarding their employees at a more commensurate level, many employers have found that they are able to employ workers who are much more committed to the task at hand. The evidence that we gather—

Noble Lords: Oh!

Baroness Prosser: My Lords, the evidence that we gather is helpful in that respect.

Lord Triesman: My Lords, the commission has worked exceptionally well. From the time when he started the work of the commission, Sir George Bain insisted that there should be regular visits to firms of all sizes, including small firms, to assess their capacity to pay the minimum wage without the loss of employment. The commission has dealt with both individual visits and the data with a great deal of skill. I hope that the House will agree on that. If it is felt that the methodology needs a wider-spread debate, of course the House should have such a debate; but I think that the commission has not done at all badly. I hope that will be acknowledged.

Motorway Advertisements

Lord Harrison: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What action they will take to maintain high environmental, planning and road safety standards in the light of the number of commercial advertisements displayed at the side of motorways.

Lord Rooker: My Lords, outdoor advertisements are controlled by the Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) Regulations 1992. Next year, we intend to make some new regulations updating, consolidating and including a modest amount of deregulation. There will be an accompanying circular, which will place renewed emphasis on the importance of amenity and public safety issues when allowing outdoor advertisements to be displayed.

Lord Harrison: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that Answer. Does he accept that there has been a considerable increase in motorway advertisements, as evidenced by firms specialising in the practice of putting such adverts forward; and that local authorities are failing to regulate such firms, so that they are now flouting planning permission, as evidenced by the BBC "Farming Today" programme recently? RoSPA has expressed concern that a near-miss may turn into a serious accident because such adverts distract drivers on motorways. Is it not time that we did something about that?

Lord Rooker: My Lords, as I have said, such advertisements, if they are fixed—that is, on trailers in fields—generally require planning permission. We have extremely well funded, democratic and independent local government, and it is their job, at their discretion, to police the system.

Lord Sheldon: My Lords, will my noble friend take into account the position on the M6, where a number of lorries were pretending to be on their way to somewhere and holding advertisements? Then there were trailers doing the same thing, and finally the ordinary placard advertisements are on the M6. Now, we are seeing adverts to show us how to create advertisements for use on motorways.
	That is the situation on the M6, and if we are not careful we will end up with the situation of some other countries—and particularly certain parts of Italy— with a continuous stream of such adverts. The suggestion made by my noble friend must be carried out in full.

Lord Rooker: My Lords, I did not quite catch the gist of that. If my noble friend is talking about the M6 motorway, if the adverts are moving and they are not covered, no planning permission is required. If they are on the highway, the highway authority will remove them. If they are in the fields, they can be there perfectly legally, with planning permission and with the permission of the owner of the field. There is a procedure to follow here. If it is not followed, it is up to the discretion of local authorities, who are well funded and well qualified to do it, to take the necessary action.

Lord Renton: My Lords, for the first time I am supporting the noble Lord, Lord Harrison. Is the Minister aware that roadside advertisements spoil the scenery and distract the attention of drivers who may be driving at great speed?

Lord Rooker: My Lords, that may be the case, but there is one in particular that has been in sight for a long time, which advises drivers where the nearest railway station is, so that they can continue their journey.

Baroness Scott of Needham Market: My Lords, does not the increasing scale of the problem suggest that relying on individual local authorities to deal with each problem individually is not a complete solution? Will the Government consider an approach to the manufacturers of such signs to see whether some sort of code of conduct can be drawn up to deal with the problem at source?

Lord Rooker: My Lords, if I remember rightly, the noble Baroness is a member of a county council. I find that an astonishing question from a member of a local authority. It is not the Government's job; we are not the nanny government.
	We have a perfectly satisfactory law, and as I said there is free guidance. The discretion is with the local authorities. Complaints can be made and, if planning permission is required and not given, they can take action. It is not a matter for central government.

Lord Berkeley: My Lords, I accept what my noble friend said, but does he agree that the Health and Safety Executive has a duty to encourage safety at work? As this is clearly a matter of road safety, will he encourage the Health and Safety Executive to take action and encourage the planning authorities when they are seen to be wanting in this regard?

Lord Rooker: Yes, my Lords, representations about particular sites by the Health and Safety Executive or by RoSPA are made to the authority where a particular advert is sited and action will be taken. It certainly should be taken.

Lord Marlesford: My Lords, does the Minister recognise that there is a problem when local authorities give themselves planning permission for roadside signs in order to make money from them? That is not an objective system. Will his new regulations, when they come in, do something about that?

Lord Rooker: My Lords, it is only an updating of the current regulations, which are some 13 years old. They are not a massive telephone directory; there will be an amount of deregulation involved as well. This Question is about the side of motorways, and I do not think that local authorities would be involved too much in giving themselves planning permission there.
	We know what we are talking about: we are talking about trailers masquerading as advertisement signs in fields. By and large, they require planning permission if they are not moving, if they are not advertising for charity, or if they are not advertising a function that has a date, such as a farmers' market next week. The latter is perfectly OK, as you do not need planning permission if there is a date limitation. If they need planning permission, it should be applied for.

Future Aircraft Carrier

Lord Astor of Hever: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	When an announcement will be made of the appointment of the physical integrator for the two new Royal Naval aircraft carriers.

Lord Bach: My Lords, the process to select the physical integrator for the future aircraft carrier project is ongoing, and we anticipate announcing the outcome shortly.

Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, I very much hope that an announcement for such a high-profile project will be made to Parliament first, and not to the media after we have risen. What will the role of the physical integrator be? How will it relate to the existing members of the alliance? Will it be risk-sharing or just taking a fee?

Lord Bach: My Lords, it is anticipated that each of the two new aircraft carriers will be the equivalent of building approximately seven to eight Type 45 destroyers, which demonstrates how large they will be. Building and physically integrating the vessels is one of the biggest challenges facing the project. The role of the physical integrator is to help to strengthen that aspect of the project. We expect whoever is appointed to work with all potential shipyards—four have been named—manufacturing facilities and alliance participants to draw up a cost-effective strategy covering the manufacturing element of the programme. Among the core requirements are likely to be innovation, the prioritisation of design activities, block integration and management of the ship-build strategy. The role of the physical integrator will not be limited to those tasks.

Lord Craig of Radley: My Lords—

Lord Redesdale: My Lords—

Noble Lords: Cross Bench!

Lord Craig of Radley: My Lords, when are the two vessels expected to be in service? Is the delay in appointing the physical integrator likely to affect the forecast dates?

Lord Bach: No, my Lords. Our planned dates remain 2012 and 2015. We are determined to reach the right decision on who should be the physical integrator. It is more important to get it right than to rush it.

Lord Redesdale: My Lords, if the service date is to be 2012—in the NAO report it was left blank—what role will the physical integrator take in risk management? Without firm targets on when the ships are to be in service, the risk management might well go out of control, as has happened in so many other projects.

Lord Bach: My Lords, under the alliance structure that we are setting up for this very large procurement, risk management and risks and rewards will be undertaken and accepted by all those who belong to the alliance. That will of course include the physical integrator, alongside the Ministry of Defence, BAe Systems and Thales. Anyone else who is a member of the alliance will be in the same position. I want to make it absolutely clear that the physical integrator will be part of the alliance.

The Lord Bishop of Portsmouth: My Lords, reluctant as I am to put the Minister on the spot at a sensitive time, may I none the less ask for reassurance on the importance of the issue not only for the Royal Navy but for the future of the shipbuilding industry in different and sometimes rival parts of the country?

Lord Bach: My Lords, the right reverend Prelate never puts me on the spot, and it is always a sensitive time. We remain fully committed to the aircraft carrier programme, which represents a huge step up in military capability for our Armed Forces. The carriers will be the biggest and most powerful warships ever constructed in the UK. They will be built in the UK under a policy that the previous government and this Government have both adopted. That is very good news for British defence and, in particular, for the British shipbuilding industry.

Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, what is a physical integrator? Could I qualify to be one?

Noble Lords: Oh!

Lord Bach: My Lords, I told the House that the competition was ongoing. If the noble Baroness would like to put in a late bid, I am sure that she would stand a very good chance. I did my best to describe what a physical integrator was or should be to the noble Lord, Lord Astor of Hever; it looks like I did not totally succeed.

Lord Mayhew of Twysden: My Lords, are the Government absolutely committed to a particular size for the ships? If so, what is it?

Lord Bach: My Lords, we are not committed to an absolute size. If the noble and learned Lord will excuse the expression, size is not of the greatest importance here. What matters is the capability that the ships have to do the important job that we have determined they should do and which most people agree is critical for our future forces' structure. They will be the largest ships that we have ever constructed.

Lord Berkeley: My Lords, I presume that the physical integrator will make sure that the two halves of the ship fit together to the same size.

Noble Lords: Oh!

Lord Bach: My Lords, my noble friend has great expertise in the railway industry. Of course they will.

Mental Capacity Bill

Brought from the Commons; read a first time, and ordered to be printed.

Business of the House: Standing Order 47

Baroness Amos: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
	Moved, That Standing Order 47 (No two stages of a Bill to be taken on one day) be dispensed with to allow the Consolidated Fund Bill to be taken through its remaining stages on Thursday 16 December.—(Baroness Amos.)

Lord Taylor of Blackburn: My Lords, although I do not oppose the Motion, would my noble friend not agree that it might be good for Members from all parts of the House to read—for light reading during the Christmas Recess—the Standing Orders and the Companion to the Standing Orders?

Baroness Amos: My Lords, I totally agree with my noble friend; we could all do with a refresher course.

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe: My Lords, perhaps my noble friend will particularly draw them to the attention of noble and learned Lords who are judges, in the light of experience on the Constitutional Reform Bill.

Baroness Amos: My Lords, I said that we could all do with a refresher course.

Lord McNally: My Lords, would the noble Baroness the Leader of the House agree to have a discussion with the usual channels about order in Questions? It does not do the House's reputation much good to sound like another place during Questions. On the other hand, if the Order Paper is to be littered with Questions that allow the questioner to read out a long list of government triumphs with a Minister then reading out another list of government triumphs, between now and the general election the patience and good order of this House will be tried a great deal. We all have to learn. I make no criticisms of what happened earlier; we have all made mistakes in this House.

Noble Lords: Too long!

Lord McNally: I am still learning, my Lords. In the most friendly way, I say that the usual channels need to look at the matter and restore some good order.

Baroness Amos: My Lords, I agree. The issue affects all Members of the House. I also think that the House is sometimes a little unforgiving of our new Members; the House should consider that.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Education Bill [HL]

Lord Triesman: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Filkin, I beg to move the Motion standing in his name on the Order Paper.
	Moved, That it be an instruction to the Committee of the Whole House to which the Education Bill [HL] has been committed that they consider the Bill in the following order:
	Clause 1, Schedule 1, Clauses 2 to 18, Schedule 2, Clauses 19 to 26, Schedule 3, Clause 27, Schedule 4, Clauses 28 to 45, Schedule 5, Clauses 46 to 49, Schedule 6, Clauses 50 to 52, Schedule 7, Clause 53, Schedule 8, Clauses 54 to 60, Schedule 9, Clauses 61 to 65, Schedule 10, Clause 66, Schedule 11, Clauses 67 to 69, Schedule 12, Clauses 70 to 74, Schedule 13, Clauses 75 to 95, Schedule 14, Clause 96, Schedule 15, Clauses 97 and 98, Schedule 16, Clauses 99 to 103, Schedule 17, Clauses 104 to 113, Schedule 18, Clauses 114 to 119, Schedule 19, Clauses 120 to 124.—(Lord Triesman.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Turkey and the EU

Lord Cobbold: rose to call attention to the proposed accession of Turkey to the European Union; and to move for Papers.
	My Lords, the subject of our debate this afternoon is of enormous importance to the future of Europe and, by implication, to the future of this country. In two days' time in Brussels the European Council is due to decide whether to open formal negotiations with Turkey with a view to Turkey becoming a full member of the European Union. The European Commission on 6 October, in its regular report on Turkey's progress towards accession, expressed itself in favour of instituting formal negotiations.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Symons of Vernham Dean, in her response to my Question on 10 November, stated categorically that the Government strongly supported Turkey's bid to join the European Union. The noble Baroness, Lady Rawlings, in the same debate, expressed support from her side of the House for the goal of eventual Turkish membership. My concern is that there has been insufficient discussion in this country of the very important issues involved—hence my sponsorship of this debate. Your Lordships' House, with its unique reservoir of expertise and experience, is an obvious place to hold such a debate and I look forward to the contributions of noble Lords who are participating this afternoon.
	Let me say at the outset that I am open-minded on this important question. I do not know Turkey well, but I have stayed with Turkish friends in Istanbul and I was recently on holiday in the Turkish part of Cyprus. My wife has travelled extensively in Turkey and always praises the friendliness, openness and generosity of the people she encountered. I am particularly aware of Turkey's long-standing membership of and contribution to NATO, since in my National Service in the RAF in the 1950s I had flying training under the NATO scheme in Canada in company with Turkish and other NATO trainee pilots.
	I turn now to the main issues. The first is simply one of geography. Article 1 of the proposed constitution for Europe states:
	"The Union shall be open to all European States".
	So is Turkey a "European state"? A small part of the country, about 5 per cent, is in Europe with about 8 per cent of its population. Personally, I find it hard to accept that this qualifies Turkey to be called a "European state" and I think that if it were to become a full member some modification of Article 1 of the proposed constitution would be required. One should point out at this stage that an exception to this rule has already been made in the case of Cyprus, which is geographically in Asia. Cyprus is small but Turkey has a population of 70 million, making it larger than all existing EU members except Germany. If current population trends continue, it is likely to overtake Germany later this century and could reach 100 million. As such, given current voting arrangements in the EU, it would have a very powerful voice.
	The second issue is one of culture and involves the contentious question of to what extent there is a European identity and a common purpose that extends beyond economic co-operation and success. If there is no such thing as a European identity, there is no reason why the Union should not be extended to any neighbouring state that is willing to accept the basic rules of membership, as laid down by the European Council in Copenhagen in 1993. The Copenhagen criteria, although designed for eastern European applicants, do not specifically mention Europe. Section 7A(iii) of the conclusions requires a candidate country to have,
	"achieved stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities, the existence of a functioning market economy as well as the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union".
	These criteria are popular with Euro-sceptics, as they omit mention of Europe and there is no pressure towards political union. But at the other extreme you do not have to be an ardent federalist seeking a European superstate to acknowledge that there is such a thing as a European identity and that it is relevant for the Union of 25 nations that we have today.
	I grew up in the post-war years. My father was an instinctive European. He was a director of the Bank for International Settlements in Basle for 25 years and participated in its regular monthly meetings of European central bankers, building friendships, trust and co-operation—and, incidentally, contributing significantly behind the scenes to the successful birth of the European Central Bank and the single currency.
	As a trainee banker on Wall Street in the 1960s, I found myself siding with other Europeans and against our American colleagues in discussions on the issues of the time. That is where I learnt that there is such a thing as a European identity and that I was a European as well as being an Englishman. I believe that the concept of a European identity still exists and is important. It underlies the opening lines of the proposed new constitution which read:
	"Reflecting the will of the citizens and States of Europe to build a common future, this Constitution establishes the European Union, on which the Member States confer competences to attain objectives they have in common".
	The question is whether Turkey and the Turkish people fit into that definition.
	The third issue is the related but more sensitive subject of religion. The European Union is sometimes referred to as a Christian club. I find that too exclusive. But Christian values and a Christian heritage are part of the European identity that I have already discussed. This remains the case despite the fact that there are an estimated 20 million Muslims in Europe now, and, we are told, more people attend mosques in this country now than attend churches.
	Europe is quite rightly an increasingly multi-cultural society. While we support this evolution as a necessary part of modern society, we all know that it can be the cause of problems, particularly in socially deprived areas. Since the time of Ataturk, Turkey has been a constitutionally secular state and has separated religion from government. It has also resisted religious extremists. Nevertheless, there are important differences, particularly in respect of gender equality, which set the two cultures apart.
	On the positive front there is a strong argument for supporting a secular state embodying a moderate Muslim faith in an area of the world so beset by religious extremism. Making Turkey a prosperous secular democratic nation can, it is to be hoped, provide an example for others in the region to emulate. On the negative side, there remains the risk that Turkey would provide an entrée for the spread of Muslim extremism into the Union. This risk would be less easy to control in the circumstances of a large-scale migration of Turkish workers to the West. The free movement of people is a key element in the structure of the Union as we know it. With current population trends, it is likely that the large economies of western Europe will depend increasingly on immigration to meet labour requirements of the future. The Commission's regular report in October on Turkey's progress towards accession admitted in its conclusions that:
	"No progress has taken place concerning the free movement of persons",
	and such discussion that had taken place had been concerned with the treatment of foreign citizens living and working in Turkey.
	These issues have not been much discussed in this country but they have been a matter of concern on the continent, particularly in France, where, in a recent Figaro poll 56 per cent voted against Turkish membership and only 36 per cent in favour. In an article in the Financial Times of 25 November, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing expressed himself to be against full membership for Turkey. He suggested that instead the EU should negotiate "privileged partnership agreements" with its neighbours, which could then include other countries such as the north African Mahgreb. This, he claimed,
	"would respond to Turkey's expectations without jeopardizing the fragile construction of the EU, which has not yet adjusted to the institutional and budgetary consequences of the latest enlargement".
	Giscard's views were denounced in the Financial Times editorial the following day under the headline,
	"A bit too late to go cold on Turkey",
	and again, by Philip Stephens in the Financial Times of 10 December, under the heading,
	"Europe must open its eyes and look to the future".
	Philip Stephens wrote,
	"The Union's present purpose seems obvious enough; to entrench democracy and build prosperity among its newest members and to project stability beyond".
	Somehow, though, Philip Stephens admitted that,
	"this does not have quite the cachet of Jean Monnet's vision of an ever closer union, a recreation of ancient Christendom".
	I shall now leave the background debate and consider the practical issues faced by the European Council on Friday. To a large extent its decision is predetermined because of the history that stretches back 40 years, to 12 September 1963, when Turkey sealed an association agreement with the then European Economic Community. In April 1987, Turkey applied for full EEC membership. Its eligibility was accepted, but the application was deferred. In December 1999, the EU summit in Helsinki recognised Turkey as an applicant, subject to a range of reforms. Since then a major reform programme has been undertaken in Turkey: inflation, for example, has fallen below 10 per cent for the first time since 1973, from more than 50 per cent in 2001.
	In its October regular report on Turkey's progress towards accession, the European Commission has given Turkey a green light under almost all headings. Thus it seems to be a foregone conclusion that the Council will agree to start formal accession negotiations in 2005, probably during the British presidency in the second half of the year.
	The negotiations themselves will have to address the three main issues that I have raised and many other more detailed aspects. They are expected to last up to 10 years. If and when a final agreement is reached on Turkish accession, it has to be accepted by each and every member state, and in France a referendum has been promised. I believe that sums up the situation as it stands and I look forward to hearing the views of other noble Lords. I beg to move for Papers.

Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, not only on the Motion but on the terms in which he has spoken. We face serious and major challenges, as the noble Lord pointed out. I unhesitatingly support the view that Turkey should be approached about membership of the European Union. The matter is particularly salient this week. Turkey is a multi-religious and multi-cultural country and, in many respects, it is quite different from the European Union. However, those are not reasons for terminating the discussions or for pointing in the wrong direction.
	Substantial reforms have already been initiated in Turkey. I emphasise that there must be no going back for Turkey. There has to be a clear acceptance of the essential principles laid down at Copenhagen: a working market economy; a willingness to observe the rules of the single market; and an acceptance of the acquis communautaire. A good start has already been made, but much more remains to be done, particularly with regard to the Kurdish community.
	As has been pointed out, Turkey is, or will be by the time we contemplate her membership, the most populous of all the countries in or seeking admission to the European Union. Turkey has 20 million Kurds and, unlike any other member state, has a clear majority of Muslims. Unlike other Arab states, she enjoys good relations with Israel, with the United States and with most Arab countries. That fact alone represents a potent reason for welcoming Turkey into the European Union. The bridge that she has patiently erected needs to be utilised, especially with regard to Israel and Palestine where, in my view, a permanent solution—a two-state solution—is desperately required.
	Turkey has exhibited an increasingly benign attitude towards Greece and Cyprus. She can also play an important role in relation to Iran and be a significant player as regards Syria. As a member of NATO and the Council of Europe, she can do much more than most to explain to the Syrians that there is no future for them in seeking weapons of mass destruction and that they should exercise a much more emollient role in the region's affairs.
	I do not for one moment argue that everything regarding Turkey and the European Union will be easy—far from it. That is why negotiations have to be so protracted. Turkey has so much more to do, especially on human rights. The enormous Muslim population, with its traditions, must equate much more with the better examples of tolerance to be found in the European Union.
	I emphasise that a good start has been made. The possibilities of membership of the European Union have already had a beneficial effect, and Turkish freedoms have advanced. Minority groups have benefited; political prisoners have been released; the political role of the military has declined; and the death penalty has disappeared. I believe that that augurs well for membership of the European Union. I wish the negotiations that are to take place this week good speed.

Lord Brittan of Spennithorne: My Lords, having negotiated the Customs Union with Turkey on behalf of the European Union nearly a decade ago, it is natural for me to give a warm welcome to the admirable speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, who has initiated this timely debate. For my part, I am strongly in favour of a clear decision being taken to open accession negotiations with Turkey on a specified and early date, with the firm intention of bringing those negotiations to a positive conclusion.
	No doubt, if that happens, the admission of Turkey will be an accession to the European Union different in kind from all previous accessions. The combination of its different history, vast size, the huge disparities between the east and west of the country, geographical position and state of development make it clear that that is the case.
	Anxieties about the continuous enlargement of the European Union are not unreasonable. Admitting a country is not just an act of friendship; the commitments on both sides are far different from those involved in membership of any other international organisation. The European Union is not a federation, but it has a high degree of economic integration and, beyond that, common policies on subjects such as the environment and equal opportunities, with a high degree of supranational decision-making.
	For those reasons, we cannot just admit Turkey for strategic reasons—something not always understood by our American friends—although it would be a huge strategic bonus. Nor should we just admit Turkey to show readiness to accept an Islamic country, although that also would be a bonus if it proved possible. For a long time, the European Union has wrestled with the question: what should our limits be—the Copenhagen conditions, the economic, political and institutional conditions to which reference has been made? Many countries could meet those conditions. The name and history of the European Union implies a further overriding condition, which essentially is geographical: that countries must be part of Europe. We cannot just be a never-ending group of like-minded countries, willing to accept a certain degree of economic and other integration.
	The geographical criterion still leaves questions over a number of individual countries. Those will have to be answered on an ad hoc basis. It is clear that as Turkey has only a toe-hold in Europe it might have been reasonable a generation ago to say no to Turkey for that reason. But that is not what we did. In signing an association agreement 40 years ago, we gave a clear nod to Turkey. Again and again, further indications were given of Turkey being eligible, and finally it was formally agreed that Turkey was eligible, provided that certain conditions were met.
	Turkey has now taken us at our word. If you like, it has called our bluff. Herculean efforts have been made economically, in the area of human rights and so far as concerns the role of the military. We cannot now honourably say no.
	But the difference of the Turkish accession from others makes it reasonable to handle it in a way that differs in some respects from previous accessions. The fact that there is negotiation implies that we cannot guarantee success; and mention has already been made of the French referendum. The particular nature of Turkish accession makes it fairer for both sides to make it clear that success is not guaranteed.
	We need to devise a formula that makes that clear, without detracting from the sincerity of our statement that our intention is that negotiations should lead to full membership. It is necessary to put in the qualifications because Turkey has some way to go on human rights. It is reasonable to be vigilant and to make clear that further progress is essential for ultimate success.
	With regard to implementation, in the case of such a vast country, so varied internally in its character, it is reasonable to insist that there should be a commitment not only to legislation but to its implementation. Moreover, a lengthy transition provision is probably needed on both sides. Turkey, for its part, may well find the acquis in areas such as health and safety and the environment more difficult than is currently appreciated.
	However, on one aspect of the current draft conclusions of the European Commission I entirely agree with Turkish objections; that is, the suggestion that there should be a permanent safety clause designed to deal with the fears of mass movement of people. There should be transition provisions, but the free movement of people is an absolutely fundamental feature of the European Union. To say that it might not apply to one member state on a permanent basis is completely inconsistent with the fundamental nature of the European Union. Therefore, it should not be included in the negotiating mandate.
	We also have to take seriously the Turkish statement that it is not interested in a half-way house and that, if we say no, it will look in other directions. The idea of a privileged partnership is, frankly, an artificial concoction. Let us not forget that the Customs Union itself is by far the most far-reaching relationship that we have with any other country.
	The fact that Turkey may turn elsewhere is not a reason for saying yes if the conditions cannot be met, but it should prevent those who are hesitant thinking that there is an easy alternative by which they can salve their consciences and avoid serious political and strategic damage.
	Let us enter into the negotiations in good faith, being honest with each other and with Turkey, but in the fervent hope that the remaining obstacles can be overcome and that, in due course, we can welcome Turkey as a respected and worthy member of our unique grouping of countries, highly integrated for important specific purposes but open and welcoming to the wider world.

Baroness Crawley: My Lords, I gently remind noble Lords that speeches should be limited to five minutes.

Lord Maclennan of Rogart: My Lords, I express my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, for giving the House the opportunity to consider these matters at the beginning of a long process. I understand the tentativeness of his conclusions. Indeed, for one who has long favoured the deepening of European integration to strengthen the effectiveness of member countries of the European Union, it is, to some extent, a conversion to welcome the prospect that the negotiations with Turkey will be successful.
	It is important to recognise the massive transformations that have taken place in that country, which have inevitably altered the perceptions of its candidacy. In democracy and human rights, Turkey has a record of alteration that is without parallel. I shall exemplify: there is the civilianisation of the National Security Council; the fact that a former chief of the naval staff is subject to criminal investigation for corruption; the fact that it is no longer taboo, although it was for a long time, to discuss Turkish issues in the national newspapers; and the fact that Kurdish education is now positively encouraged. Those are extraordinary changes, coupled with the authoritative reports from the Council of Europe's committee on the prevention of torture, which show the practical as well as the legislative changes that have taken place in the structure and organisation of the prison service, the legal services and the policing services. Of course there is more to do, but the pace of change encourages hope that by the time Turkey has come to terms with the difficult absorption of the acquis communautaire, its social life will have been quite transformed.
	I comment on what the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, said about the geographical nature of Europe. It has indeed changed, even by the acceptance of the candidacy of Bulgaria, which for many centuries was part of the Ottoman Empire. Geography cannot be a delimiting criterion for membership of the European Union.
	The arguments for adhesion to strengthen the foreign and security policy of the European Union seem to me to be overwhelming. We need assistance in combating drug trafficking, terrorism and trafficking in people. In all those matters, Turkey could provide immense practical help and act as a most important energy transport hub, further securing our supplies when they are too dependent on northern routes.
	It is also important to recognise the demographic changes that have made Turkey a more attractive member than it would have been even five years ago. There have been suggestions of a substantial population increase, but that does not fully register the downturn in fertility rates in Turkey and the flattening-off of the population growth, which is now quite discernable.
	We should approach this difficult negotiation with fairness and objectivity, seeking to determine whether Turkey's identity and its compatibility with European norms of democracy and economic modernisation have been properly met. If the changes that have begun are continued in the same manner and with the determination of the Turkish people to continue them, we can embark upon this course with great optimism.

The Lord Bishop of Portsmouth: My Lords, like other noble Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to have this afternoon's debate. At present, the idea of Turkey's accession is unpopular. Indeed, some polls suggest that only one third of the EU member states' populations are in favour. That unpopularity is focused chiefly on questions of culture and religion. The people of Turkey are overwhelmingly Muslim, and there is some evidence that minority religious groups in Turkey are systematically disadvantaged, if not openly mistreated—to which matter I want to return in a few moments. Yet Europe is already multi-cultural and multi-religious, with many millions of Muslims, as the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, pointed out, resident as citizens, so there should be no hasty or unreasoned opposition on religious or cultural grounds.
	The fact that those issues have come to the fore is evidence that there is uncertainty about the European identity; the extent to which it is based on shared values; and whether those values should be subject to artificial control. That raises an important question for the British Government and other member states about the basis of our desire to be part of the EU in the first place.
	There are certainly serious concerns about the effect of introducing a geographically and numerically vast, poor and largely agricultural partner to the Union, but the almost apocalyptic utterances that we sometimes hear fail to recognise that all the European nations and Turkey are likely to undergo massive changes in the minimum of 15 years before Turkey might become a member state. Any attempt to prejudge the results from this distance can hardly be reliable.
	There is indeed some objection to Turkey's entry on the ground of democratic deficiencies. I am naturally concerned about the position of the historic Greek, Syrian and Armenian Orthodox Christian minorities, as well as the more recently established chaplaincies—for example, the Anglican chaplaincies in Ankara, Izmir and Istanbul—especially when I hear that, despite promises from Turkey's responsible authorities, those Christian communities still face many problems of legal recognition, property rights and the development of educational curricula. However, it is also important to notice the great strides that Turkey has made and is making to address such problems. No doubt there is still a long way to go, but there is still a long time to travel. Experience shows that Turkey has made successive and concerted efforts to bring its domestic life into line with European standards. The formal opening of accession talks would be an effective piece of European foreign policy with which to encourage Turkey in its internal reforms.
	The alternative is potentially disastrous for the stability of Europe's eastern borders. It is hard to imagine that, if Turkey lost all hope of European integration, the current impetus to change could be maintained, and there is a serious danger that some of Turkey's more reactionary groups might look elsewhere for guidance. We should not underestimate the precariousness of the present Turkish Government's programme for reform, and we would be unwise to jeopardise it.
	At a more strategic level, there is great potential value in nurturing Turkey as an example of a Muslim democracy. The accession of Turkey would help to forge closer co-operation between Christians and Muslims in the Union—something that may turn out to be of immeasurable significance. The popular tendency to fear alternative religions and cultures or to regard them cynically as useful tools to get Christianity off the scene needs to give way to a determination to work together for the common good of the Earth.
	All the evidence suggests that religion, in particular, is an increasingly potent global force and we should therefore all be very careful about closing the door on Europe's great Muslim neighbour. Indeed, by showing a willingness to welcome Turkey's Muslim population, we would set an example of the kind of hospitality that should characterise relations between the great Abrahamic faiths of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. For, in the words of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor in a recent lecture, it is the vital and vibrant reality of hospitality that those faiths, at their best, have in common.

Baroness Uddin: My Lords, amen to that. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, for this timely opportunity to consider the matter. Noble Lords on all sides will know that I have not taken part in many European debates and certainly none about Turkey. I hope that your Lordships will be lenient with me when I confess that I decided only at the very last moment to participate, being spurred on by an article that I read on Turkey in the Guardian about violence against women, mentioning honour killings in particular.
	I love Turkey. The first time that I visited Turkey was five years ago. I love the place, the people, the fact that it is a secular country—that Church and state, religion and state, have been separated for a long time—and that it has a fantastic record of educating women. The Turkish people's love for children is so apparent when you visit.
	I have a particular objection to the fact that the fate of a nation of 70 million people may depend on an article in a reputable paper referring to honour killing and gender violence as reasons why accession should not be allowed or should be thought about twice. This is why I stand here to add my penn'orth.
	At the outset, I should apologise to the House. I must ask the House to excuse me, but I may not be able to listen to the Minister's winding-up speech, and I will understand if she does not reply to me.
	I welcome Britain's position supporting Turkey's earliest entry to the Union, and I welcome the Commission's latest report, which has given positive signals that Turkey has met the Copenhagen political criteria. To those of us who are familiar with Turkey five years ago and more recently, there is a staggering difference. The political changes and commitment towards changes have been enormous. We must welcome that fact. What is interesting is from where the opposition is coming. Much has been said, more eloquently than I can say it, about the fact that the world has changed fundamentally since 9/11. There is a sense of anger and anguish about how Muslim populations worldwide are treated by the Western nations.
	For all those very good reasons, it is important to reflect, as have the noble Lord, Lord Brittan, and the right reverend Prelate, and as others no doubt will. Britain has taken an honourable and admirable position. The Home Secretary recently said that Turkey had delivered and that it was time that the EU delivered its side of the bargain. I could not agree with that more. That will effectively counter some member countries' Islamophobic ideas about why accession cannot take place or negotiations cannot continue.
	I have perhaps said more than I should venture, but this is the right time for us to ensure that we extend the arms of friendship, as well as engaging in negotiation, discussion and dialogue. It is critical that we capitalise on the potential of 70 million people and the economic success of Turkey in the Union. On that basis, I very much hope that Turkey will be embraced by the Union, because that will send a clear strategic message well beyond Turkey. I say no more. Given Turkey's record of solidarity with the West for so long, it is time that we let Turkey's citizens know that we are with them, not against them.

Lord Biffen: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, on his good fortune in the ballot and on his wisdom in choosing this topic for our debate. Time is short. I want to make three points.
	The first point is that the accession of Turkey will not end the eastward push of the European Union. It will not be a question of, like Pitt, saying, "Roll up that map", after Austerlitz. We will find that the waiting room of those who want to join the European Union is quite crowded. We know that Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia are already on the threshold of negotiations. Doubtless they will be followed in due course by the remnants of the former Republic of Yugoslavia plus Albania. A third wave will be the southern Caucasus states of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and of course, topically, the Ukraine.
	The consequence of that will be to add about 20 nations and 200 million people. Of course, no one can anticipate precisely what will be the form of that association, but I can assert that the Turkish quest for full membership will have a considerable impact on those countries and their expectations.
	My second point is that such expansion would bring the European Union, with its current structures and military and foreign affairs ambitions, however embryonic, right alongside Russia, from Estonia down to Ukraine. It is a situation with which we in western Europe are reasonably unfamiliar. The cordon sanitaire protected us during the years between the wars; since the war, Finland and Yugoslavia, in their contrasting ways, have provided a sort of buffer. We are certainly light years away from when Jean Monnet could refer to the,
	"great dynamic forces of Communism".
	None the less, the relationships which we now will have to strike will have to be treated with caution, and certainly with an understanding of the anxieties that Russia is bound to harbour when it sees NATO expanded in the way that it is likely to be in the context that I have just described.
	Thirdly, I want to talk about the impact that the negotiations will have on the existing European Union. Mention has been made of the 1993 Copenhagen Council, which set the rubric for accession countries and how they would be treated. It is not often mentioned that the Copenhagen Council also contained the assertion that it would have to lead to,
	"maintaining the momentum of European integration".
	I ask noble Lords to reflect on the present state of Europe: its problems with agriculture, with the euro and the difficulty of ensuring that the stabilisation programmes work effectively; the problem of corruption, an indelicate point that none the less lies at the heart of so much public disenchantment with the European Union; and bureaucracy.
	The noble Lord, Lord Brittan, made generous mention of the acquis communitaire, which the Turks and all applicant countries will be required to accept. The Foreign Office says that the document is 80,000 pages. That is bureaucracy on stilts. It is unrealistic to think of the accession of Turkey against those problems without having a clearer idea of how we wish to reconstitute the existing European Union to enable it to accommodate the profound changes and transformations implicit in the negotiations.
	We are today holding up the mirror against Turkey. We should also hold the mirror up against the existing European Union and its practices and, in my view, the great need for it to become more like a Gaullist Europe des patries. Ultimately, it will not be resolved in these short debates. It will be taken to the British public through a referendum, and upon their good sense and instinctive judgments I rest.

Lord Dykes: My Lords, coming to this place after 27 years in the other place, I naively expected that one would get away from the pre-Maastricht, Maastricht and immediately post-Maastricht argumentation about the European Union.
	I disagree with the pessimistic conclusions of the noble Lord, Lord Biffen, on what has happened so far in the European Union's development. It has been a remarkable exercise. It seems daunting to us all that the European Union now comprises 25 countries and will increase yet again fairly shortly. It seems a lot to digest in a relatively short time, but surely the precise purpose of the European convention, its parameters and content is to explain the relationships between the nation states. There seems to have been a diminution neither of chancery politics between sovereign countries nor of the intrinsic sovereignty of those member states as a result of the convention. Indeed, their reinforcement has depressed some of the super-federalists. Therefore, the noble Lord, Lord Biffen, need not worry too much about that, I hope.
	The convention provides for a further expansion, once the people throughout the existing member states have ratified the constitution. That will give us the opportunity to consider the huge task of absorbing a country such as Turkey. I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, both for his good fortune in the ballot and for his initiative in choosing this major subject.
	Originally, I shared the massive consternation at the idea of Turkey's accession, because it seemed such a huge and indigestible concept, and was coming to a conclusion against it. In the light of more information, expectations and knowledge of such a fascinating and brilliant country—alas, I have been there only once, and only to Istanbul—I think that Turkey's future membership will be an enormous advantage to the Union.
	Time does not allow us to go into the hugely complex details but Turkey's accession will be a massive task. No one needs to worry about the Turks criticising us—their Prime Minister was wrong to imply that—if the existing European member states did not say that there were huge tasks involved in the integration of Turkey into the European Union.
	I agree entirely with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, about the remarkable legislation already introduced in Turkey. However, that is legislation on Turkey's statute book, or whatever it is called in that constitutional system, and it has not yet been implemented. A long time will be needed to see how Turkey measures up. The behaviour of the military has started to be inspiring and positive—none the less, more evidence will be needed. The human rights picture has only just begun to be mitigated by both legislation and administrative decisions; there is a lot more to come.
	The concept of Turkey absorbing the whole acquis communitaire sounds like a nightmare both for the bureaucrats involved and for politicians dealing with the matter in all the member states. The position of France is now coloured adversely by respondents in opinion polls there being seemingly dead against Turkish membership. President Chirac has taken initiatives to try to improve that position in due course. Those are huge problems.
	The oppression of the Kurds and all that has happened in eastern Turkey cannot just be conveniently forgotten rapidly as a result of what has occurred in the recent advent of an application. I feel that the summit will agree to open the talks; that is the general expectation. It is also generally expected that it will take a long time to go through all those negotiations. The Turks must therefore expect to be patient. They must educate their own public about the need for patience, not that the existing European Union needs to address them in any condescending way. Turkey has a lot to offer if it is possible for that country to be absorbed into the European Union. Ultimately, I am optimistic, although that might take the old-fashioned, classical definition of "optimism": a 97 year-old man who got married for the fifth time and deliberately bought a new house near a school. I like to be more positive than that; nevertheless, the Turks must be realistic.
	The question of the death penalty's removal is very encouraging, as has been mentioned. Other factors related to the social legislation are paving the way for Turkey's eventual entry. This will be a massive exercise; indeed, the biggest ever carried out by the Union. We must see what happens to future growth rates and so on in Turkey, particularly eastern Turkey, and how people on very low incomes—again, primarily in eastern Turkey—can be absorbed into the economic processes of the Union. We must be optimistic, because there is so much at stake. I believe that the Muslim contribution from this amazing country will be of enormous significance and benefit to the European Union.

Baroness D'Souza: My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, for bringing about this important and timely debate. I declare an interest, having worked in Turkey in the 1980s under the auspices of what was then the Overseas Development Administration, now the Department for International Development. I also worked there in the 1990s. During the latter period, I was frequently, although mercifully for very brief periods, a guest of the government—in other words, a detainee.
	There appears to be general consensus that the human rights record in Turkey has improved in the past few years. As previous speakers have said, this improvement is partly attributable to the promise—and, indeed, the hope—of accession to the European Union. My friends and colleagues in Turkey remind me that in the run-up to the last discussions about EU membership, which proved unsuccessful, the human rights record similarly improved. However, once turned down, there was a distressing and marked deterioration in human rights violations, specifically the widespread practice of torture.
	Turkey has for many years held an unenviable record on the use of torture. In the 20 years since 1980, more than 400 citizens have died as a result of torture, with 45 deaths in 1994 alone. In the first four months of this year there were 50 complaints of torture and, in the first six months, the Turkish Human Rights Association reported 692 incidents of torture. As of August of this year, the Turkish Human Rights Foundation received 597 requests for medical treatment as a result of torture.
	Some of those cases concern the unlawful detention and abuse of children. For example, on 20 November, near Diyarbakir in south-eastern Turkey, a 12 year-old child and his father were shot from less than half a metre and killed by the police, who then laid weapons on their bodies claiming that they were terrorists. That is refuted by many witnesses and several human rights organisations. The inquiry into that double murder is being held in secret.
	Despite continuing concerns about violations of human rights, Turkey now has all the appropriate laws and mechanisms to deal with them. The issue is one of political will to implement the law. Again, it is believed by those who have expertise on Turkey that that could be achieved rather easily by introducing or strengthening three vital mechanisms.
	First, there should be effective and routine internal supervision of police stations; secondly, there should be a readiness on the part of the justice, interior and prime ministries to respond rapidly when there are allegations of torture; and, thirdly, there should be a willingness to allow independent visits by international non-governmental organisations to police stations and detention facilities. Those measures would give us all confidence in the Turkish Government's promise of "zero tolerance for torture" in the run-up to accession negotiations.
	There should be no let-up in the pressure being brought to bear on the Turkish Government to end the culture of impunity, to eradicate the practice of torture, to ensure free and fair trials and to stop the suppression of free speech, particularly in the east of Turkey, where any criticism of state authority or expression of ethnic identity still run the risk of official persecution.
	I believe that accession negotiations should begin and that now, and in the years leading up to accession, the strongest possible pressure from the member states of the European Union could be highly effective. I therefore ask that the Minister use all the influence at her disposal to help to bring Turkey out of its sometimes medieval past into a modern Europe where the rule of law prevails.

Lord Rogan: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Cobbold for the opportunity to give my support to the Republic of Turkey's bid to become a full member of the European Union. Moves to date aimed at blocking Turkish accession to Europe's political and economic union have sent an extremely negative message to the Islamic world. It is a message that contradicts the very ideals of Western democracy, which are the bedrock of our society—ideals that we are fighting for in Iraq.
	Surely religious considerations should be of little or no relevance to the debate. They are a side issue, as Turkey is well on its way to having earned its place at the European table. It is a country that has travelled a long way since the first president of the republic, Kemal Atatürk, drove through his secularist modernising reforms in the 1920s.
	Since then, Turkey has stood alongside the allies in the Second World War, stood with the West during the long decades of the Cold War and stands today with us in our global war on terror. But let us not forget that in orientating itself towards the West, Turkey more often than not turned its back on the East and its former Ottoman territories.
	Turkey, however, remains today as it was for centuries—a stanchion between the civilisations of the East and the West. We often hear of the "clash of civilisations" and the argument that democracy is unsuitable for Muslim or Islamic countries. Yet Turkey, a country in which roughly 90 per cent of the population are Muslims, has provided the perfect foil to that argument. Lebanon was another example, but I need not remind the House where western neglect left that democracy.
	If we turn our back on Turkey in the coming decade, we will show the Islamic world that it is the West that is ill prepared for Muslim democracies and not vice versa. The problem is that there are some member states in the European Union that are opposed to Turkey's accession as a full member because it is a Muslim country, regardless of its ability to meet the entrance criteria.
	Setting religion aside and focusing on the issues more pertinent to the debate, it is imperative that Turkey is successful in its efforts to join the European Union. Its security is fundamental to the defence interests of the United Kingdom and to Europe as a whole. Turkey remains a key security partner of NATO and Europe. It is now more important than ever that Turkey, with the largest army in Europe, plays a full role in European decision making on security issues—a task that it can fulfil only by taking up full membership of the European Union. One must also consider the economic benefits that will flow from Turkey's accession to the Union, which will help the other member states as well as Turkey.
	Turkey has progressively reformed its society, its constitution, its religious affairs, and its human rights record. It has recently supported the Annan plan, alongside the Turkish Cypriot community in northern Cyprus, in its efforts to resolve that long-standing ethnic conflict through reunification.
	The present Turkish Government have developed their economy, delivered political stability, reformed the penal code and have addressed women's rights and the position of the Kurdish minority. Yet, in the face of all of that, we still hear regular cries that the Turks have not done enough. The cry goes out time and again that the Turks must do yet more.
	Certain member states are threatening to veto Turkey's inclusion even if it meets all the entry criteria. To do so would be an act of great folly. It would be an act that would guarantee that Turkey became once again the "sick man of Europe".

Lord Dubs: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, on having secured this debate and giving us the chance to talk about an issue that has been debated relatively little in this country compared with France, Germany and other countries, where it is high on the agenda for discussion. Of course, in those countries there is more hostility to Turkish accession than there is here.
	Turkish membership of the European Union would be good for Britain, good for the European Union and good for Turkey, provided that the conditions for Turkey's entry are the same as those that have applied to other accession countries. If Europe seeks to set different and more exacting standards of Turkey than of other countries, we are saying that Turkey will become a second-class member of the EU. A country with as proud a tradition as Turkey will say, "No. We want to be full members on an equal footing with other countries rather than have second-class status".
	Therefore, I am concerned at expressions coming from the Continent, such as giving Turkey the status of a "special partnership", which means second-class status, or saying that the free movement of labour within an EU of which Turkey is a member would be permanently suspended. To my mind, those are not acceptable ways forward.
	Of course there will have to be transitional arrangements, although, given that it is likely to take Turkey at least 10 years from the opening of negotiations to become a member, a great deal can happen in those 10 years and transitional arrangements may not be necessary.
	For Turkey, as proved to be the case for the other accession countries, the process of accession itself can be very important in achieving changes in the country. I remember people saying to me in Poland or one of the other recently joined countries that the need to conform to European Union standards made those countries bring about changes that they wanted to bring about but they were able to do it faster under the pressure of seeking to join the EU. I believe that the same will apply to Turkey.
	It is acknowledged that Turkey has come a long way: the abolition of the death penalty, a legal framework, some improvement in the rights of Kurds and less power for the military in the scheme of things are all positive advances. Nevertheless, and I am sure that the Turkish Government would be the first to agree, many more changes will have to be made. The noble Baroness, Lady D'Souza, referred to some of the issues that are still on the agenda.
	Only yesterday, I had a meeting with representatives of the Kurdish Democratic People's Party. They want Turkey to join the EU, seeing it as a way of achieving human rights for their people which have been denied to them in the past. Things are getting better, but in their view they have quite a long way to go in terms of voting rights, language, education, terms of imprisonment and allegations of torture.
	It is of course a fact that, with 25 new members since last May, European governance has to move forward; hence we need the constitution. But we may well have to make further changes anyway, and Turkey's accession might also propel us to make new arrangements for the effective governance of the EU. That is almost inevitable.
	It has been said that Turkish membership would increase instability on the EU's south-eastern border. I think that the reverse is true: if Turkey was a member, stability in the south-east of Europe would actually be increased. Indeed, we should bear in mind that Turkey has long been a member of NATO and we did not object to that. Turkey would be a source of strength to the EU. But if we say no to Turkey, where will she go? What future is there for Turkey? If Europe says, "You are not acceptable", inevitably she will have to look for allies further to the east. That would hardly increase the strength and stability of our southern and eastern borders.
	I turn to the question of Cyprus. I hope very much that, given that they now have the power of veto, the Government of Cyprus will not use it to vote against Turkish membership. Relations between Turkey and Greece have improved considerably in the recent past. I hope that the government in Nicosia will see Turkish membership as a positive move and will be able to resolve the issue of the divided island without recourse to anything that might hamper Turkey's movement into the EU.
	Finally, I believe that Turkey would provide Europe with a good bridge to the Islamic world. We have 10 million Muslims in the European Union and Turkey is a secular, moderate Muslim country. I can do no better than quote from a speech made in Oxford last May by Prime Minister Erdogan:
	"We in Turkey have reconciled our traditional Islamic culture with our secular and democratic structures. We have demonstrated that a country with an overwhelmingly Muslim population could turn its face to and integrate with the Western world. We have shown the true progressive and modern face of Islam. We have targeted not the conflict of civilizations, but their meeting in Turkey".

Lord Inglewood: My Lords, when 20 years ago or so, I began to be interested in European Community politics, one of the standard clever questions at party meetings and on the hustings was whether Turkey should join the European Community. Invariably, I used to reply that I thought not. I suppose that the European Community was, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold—whom I thank for introducing the debate—a Christian club; but not, I hasten to add, in the words of Prime Minister Erdogan over the weekend, simply a Christian club. It was a Christian club that welcomed others to it within the framework of a secular system, one that derived its character from the Judaeo-Christian tradition and would continue to do so.
	At the time, Turkey did not seem to fit into that definition. In any event, it was a hypothetical question. What I am not sure about today is whether that assessment holds true; the world has moved on. Twenty years ago, it was self-evident that if Europe expanded eastwards, it would have to go through the now vanished Soviet empire, which at that time looked improbable. Now the European Union is about to abut Turkey on a wide front. It includes some of the European part of the historic Ottoman lands and shortly will comprise much more.
	If Turkey is to join the EU, there are four main issues to consider: political, economic, legal and cultural. Turkey's case that politically it is part of Europe is, I think, arguable. I am not sure whether I am convinced by it, but I certainly accept that there is a good argument. However, the kind of thing which concerns me is that Turkey's eastern border runs with that of Iraq, and by no stretch of the imagination is that country European. For example, I have the greatest anxiety about the politics of greater Kurdistan becoming an internal EU problem.
	I accept entirely that the educated, middle-class Turkish perception of themselves as European is right, but what about the proverbial small man in eastern Anatolia? Atatürk's reforms after the First World War emphasised Turkey's western credentials, and I think that membership of the European Union can be seen as the summation of his work. But it is interesting, and no accident, that Atatürk came from Thessalonika and not from, say, near Lake Van. Has Turkey as a whole become western, or is it merely a Middle Eastern Mediterranean country with a Western veneer?
	Economically, Turkey can sense significant benefits from membership of the EU. I understand that, and I can see all kinds of economic benefits to Europe from her joining. It is interesting to note that when members of Sub-Committee A of the European Union Committee recently visited Brussels, it was explained that the cost of Turkey's possible membership was not impossible. The supported agricultural sector is not as big as is sometimes supposed, and given the application of the so-called absorption factor and the case of structural funds, the cost of Turkish membership may well be manageable.
	Legally, there are issues in both the civil and criminal fields. In the civil context, will the acquis and the rule of law be applied? After all, Turkey has been the source of a great deal of pirated intellectual property which has found its way into western Europe. We should not forget the extensive problems in the Union over the application and enforcement of Community laws, especially in southern European countries.
	Turning to the criminal context, I recall that when I was a member of the European Parliament delegation to the Turkish Grand National Assembly, we rightly spent a lot of time making points about human rights. We should recognise that matters have improved and are improving, but of course they must still go on doing so. Furthermore, we should not hold the past against the Turks any more than we have done against the Spaniards, the Portuguese, the East Germans, the Poles or the Hungarians. As long as human rights are upheld and the Copenhagen Criteria are adhered to, we should not start carping.
	Culturally, I admire the Turks and their fusion of European and Middle Eastern influences. There is little doubt that the liberal Islamic traditions of the country, combined with her recent westernisation, provide no threat to our view of the world. But, again, how deep does that actually go? Is that the real Turkey, and if it is not, what impact would a country of around 100 million people have on the European Union?
	I have to admit that if I were a Turkish leader, I am not sure that I would seek membership of the European Union; but that is not the point because I am not. The Turks want to join, and we are no longer facing a hypothetical question. Whatever we do, we must play straight and fair with Turkey. We must not flirt, but treat her aspirations straightforwardly and seriously. If at this weekend's summit the European Council decides to open negotiations about full membership of the Union, it must be done in good faith and with the genuine intention of wanting to make it work. After all, whether or not Turkey joins the European Union, we Britons and the European Union as a whole are good friends and allies for the long run. If we give our word, either expressly or by implication, we must—I repeat, we must—honour it. We must not invite Turkey to walk up the aisle, only to deny her at the altar rail.

Lord Monson: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, has made several interesting points. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Cobbold on his brilliant timing and his most thoughtful speech. It is not easy to do justice to this complex and important issue in only five minutes, but I shall do my best.
	I first went to Turkey 51 years ago as a backpacker and stayed there for a month. In those days there were no cheap flights, so I went by third-class train and then by fourth-class ship from Naples to Istanbul via Piraeus. That Spartan mode of travel meant that I met a great many Turks in their twenties—all male, of course; that goes without saying—some of whom had been at university in France, Germany or Switzerland, although most had not. At least one had fought the communists in Korea. They came from the various regions of Turkey, with one from Bulgaria, and had different backgrounds. However, they were all most helpful and informative about their country. As informed people of that age tend to be, they were open and frank about both its virtues and failings, which was most valuable.
	In 1953, the 500th anniversary of the fall of Constantinople to the besieging Ottoman armies took place, and the celebrations were a real eye-opener. The fierce national pride of the Turks and their pride in military glory persist—politically incorrect though it may be considered—and other countries ignore it at their peril.
	I found the country quite fascinating and, after I married, my wife and I visited there frequently, travelling all over the western 60 per cent of the country on long-distance buses and sometimes on coastal steamers, normally being the only foreigners on board the bus or the ship. Over the past 25 years we have travelled in slightly greater comfort and have been privileged to become friends with people from a very different intellectual, social and economic background. All in all—although I cannot claim to know eastern Turkey—I have been privileged to travel fairly extensively and have been able to mix with, talk to and, above all, observe people of all backgrounds and ages intermittently over a period of more than 50 years. At the risk of sounding pompous, I believe that I have a certain feel for the country.
	I have received great generosity and kindness there over the years, often from total strangers, and I can say, without being in any way starry-eyed or uncritical, that it is a country I like and admire. So when examining the pros and cons of Turkey's membership of the EU, my attitude is: first, would it be good for Turkey; secondly, would it be good for the United Kingdom; and, only thirdly, would it be good for the EU as a whole?
	Would membership be good for Turkey? Psychologically, in the short term, yes—not only for the élites but for a very much wider spectrum of people— but, economically, I am not at all certain. Poland and the other eastern European countries got a very raw deal when they joined compared with Greece, the Republic of Ireland, Spain and Portugal, but they were prepared to swallow it in return for escaping for good the clutches of the Russian bear. The Turks certainly will not be offered a better deal—more likely a worse one—and they do not like being humiliated.
	Economic aspects apart, other strains are likely to manifest themselves in the longer term. Yes, Turkey is officially a secular society—but it remains socially very conservative, as it has every right to do. Paradoxically, middle-class life—I use "middle class" in a very broad sense—in Turkey and western Europe respectively was probably closer 50 years ago than it is today. I remember well Switzerland in the early 1950s: the father was indisputably the head of the household; the family went to church every Sunday; and children and adolescents were obedient and respectful to their elders.
	What are the symbols socially of western Europe today as seen from the east? Faliraki, Ibiza, drunken stag parties vomiting all the way from Dublin to Prague to Tallinn, drugs, "Big Brother" and, above all, widespread teenage promiscuity, widely condoned. We have got used to all this, but it is total anathema to the Turks. How are the two cultures to be reconciled?
	Would Turkish membership be good for Britain? Yes, if it broke the combined power of France and Germany, both of whom—surprise, surprise—have just got away scot-free with breaking the stability and growth pact, and led to a much looser Europe, as favoured by the noble Lord, Lord Biffen, a Europe which interfered far, far less in the nooks and crannies of people's everyday lives. But, realistically, it is a tall order.
	Would Turkish membership be good for the EU as a whole? If Turkey had a population of 5 million there would be no problem whatever. Indeed, if it had a population of 20 million but had the same birth rate as most other European countries, there would be few problems. But a projected population of 80 million in 15 years' time, when the population of the rest of Europe is predicted to fall, is indisputably daunting.
	Perhaps I may make one penultimate point. If Turkey were a member of the EU today, with a full quota of Turkish MEPs in the European Parliament, you can be certain that Signor Buttiglione would be a European Commissioner at this moment, in the post originally allotted to him. Any tension there may be between Islam and Christianity—and it does exist—is dwarfed by the potential tension between Islam and post-Christianity.
	Finally, there is no doubt that Turkey, like the United States, Russia and China, is from Mars, while western Europe nowadays is from Venus. This is most unlikely to change and it is something that must be taken into consideration.

Lord Rea: My Lords, in my five minutes I shall concentrate on whether Turkey's human rights record has improved sufficiently to meet the 1993 Copenhagen criteria. As a case example of that I shall be focusing on the position of the Kurdish people of Turkey, who constitute about one-quarter of its population.
	Mustafa Kemal's modernisation of Turkey in the early 1920s resulted in an intensely nationalistic unitary state—secular, of course, but dominated by the military. This state denied ethnic diversity and so the Kurdish language and cultural customs were outlawed. A policy of assimilation was rigidly imposed, often brutally, with gross violation of human rights. This is well known to the entire world and is documented by Amnesty International and the UN.
	Inevitably, after prolonged oppression, some Kurds took up arms in the mid-1980s and the long conflict in the south-east region began. As part of Turkey's attempt to suppress the rebellion—which was initially aimed at securing an independent Kurdistan but later modified to asking simply for equal treatment for Kurds as for other Turks—some 3,000 villages were evacuated; many were destroyed and 3 million Kurds were displaced. The conflict is now at a low ebb following the PKK's unilateral ceasefire in 1998—although, because there was no reciprocal ceasefire or amnesty, the Kurdish guerrillas now again defend themselves when attacked.
	This conflict was the main reason why Turkey's request in 1987 for EU accession was turned down. Now, on the threshold of possible accession, Mr Erdogan's government have abolished, as many noble Lords have pointed out, some of their most oppressive laws. However, it is difficult to turn round a system so deeply ingrained as is the denial of Kurdish identity in Turkey.
	Although in the past year or two Kurdish has been allowed in the media, it is restricted on television to one hour in the morning and is entitled "local dialect" news, so reluctant is officialdom to use the word "Kurdish". The language can now be taught, but only in private schools. There are numerous examples of continuing arbitrary arrests, and torture continues, as the noble Baroness, Lady D'Souza, pointed out—although it is now in a modified form which leaves less physical evidence on the body.
	Despite the slow progress, nearly all Kurds want Turkey to join the European Union because they feel that their human rights will be better protected and that they might receive some economic assistance for the grossly underdeveloped regions in the south-east.
	However, many feel that the recent changes in the law are only cosmetic. They are asking for guarantees that will expand and entrench the gains in human rights that they have already made. They also ask for recognition of ethnic diversity in the country as a whole. For this to happen, a change in Turkey's rather Mussolini-like constitution may be necessary.
	Three weeks ago an international conference was held in Brussels entitled "The EU, Turkey and the Kurds", one session of which I chaired. The final resolution puts the Kurdish position clearly and reasonably and I commend it to my noble friend. I am sorry that I have no time to read out any of its paragraphs.
	Last Friday an advertisement appeared in Le Monde and the International Herald Tribune signed by some 200 prominent Kurdish and Turkish people living in Turkey and Europe, including Leyla Zana, the Kurdish Member of the Turkish Parliament recently released after nine years in prison. I should like to quote one paragraph from that advertisement. I have had to translate it from the French and I hope your Lordships will forgive me if I have a word or two wrong. It states:
	"Turkey should guarantee its Kurdish citizens rights comparable to those benefiting Basques, Catalans, Scots, Lapps, South Tyroleans and Walloons in the democratic countries of Europe or to those which it claims itself for Turks in Cyprus".
	I am sorry that they missed out Welsh people, because there are many friends of the Kurds in Wales. They identify with them on the linguistic issue. The letter from these prominent Kurds continues, of course, and it is a clear and concise statement that I hope my noble friend and the Government will consider seriously in the run up to Friday's ministerial meeting.

Lord Patten: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Rea, has raised some important points about the Kurdish issue, particularly those related to human rights. I shall return to those in a moment or two. This is a remarkable moment for me, as it is the first time, at either end of the Palace of Westminster, that I have risen to make remarks about foreign affairs. Just as I was never considered to be brutal enough for the Whips' Office, I was obviously never considered to be subtle enough to serve in matters of foreign and commonwealth affairs.
	I wish to make three points against which to set Turkish application for accession. The first is the list of improvements that they must make before they can be considered for accession. Many other noble Lords who have spoken in this excellent debate initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, have referred to them. Unusually in this afternoon's debate, my little list begins with matters economic. Far too much of the Turkish economy is in the hands of the state. Everything from telecoms to Turkish Airlines needs the attention of the privatisers or to be moved into the private sector. There is also the need to ensure the independence of the judiciary, which I do not think has been mentioned this afternoon, and the need to ensure that the police, as in the Kurdish issue, are firmly under control and the paramount need to ensure that the army is in its box and is kept there.
	There is also the reassurance that we all seek that the legacy of Kemal Atatürk—Turkey as a secular society—is going to be preserved inside or outside of the European Union and that there is no possibility of a theocratic state emerging in Turkey. There are pressures there all the time, and I know that it is politically incorrect to mention them, but it is important to mention them, as the noble Lord, Lord Monson, did in his highly important speech.
	The second point that I wish to test the accession of Turkey against is the current fallacy that somehow Turkish membership of the European Union will automatically help us in the clash of civilisations and will help to provide a cultural and social bridge between Christianity and the Muslim world. On those points, there are lots of other countries that do not need geographical propinquity to help considerably in bringing that about. There is nothing unique in the case of Turkey; it just happens to be the nearest predominantly Muslim country of that size.
	I also think that there is a further dangerous fallacy that, if Turkey is inside the European Union all around the world, Muslims will see that that is what one gets for good behaviour—access to the common agricultural policy or whatever—and will behave better, so that terrorism will ebb away. I really hope that our statesmen will be more hard-nosed in their assessment of the effects of Turkish membership.
	Just as the old Michelin guides used to say "a little history", my third and last point involves a little geography. It is terribly important in this context. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, on having pointed that out in his important introductory speech. It is extremely odd that the European Union has not set out to define what it believes to be the land mass and adjacent islands of Europe. I have looked at the European constitution, and Article 1(2), to which the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, referred in his introductory speech, states:
	"The Union shall be open to European States which . . . "
	It does not go on to define where the borders of Europe are.
	Certainly, if Turkey is admitted into the Union, that will be a leap from Europe into an Asiatic world. It will be the first truly Asian country that Europe has admitted. It is time to pause to think about the list of other countries that may seek to join the European Union. Moldova is tacked on to the rump of Romania, but Ukraine penetrates deeply into Europe and has borders with Hungary, Slovakia and Poland.
	It is important for those in the European Union who run such matters to pause to think about Turkey's application against the little list of other countries that may well wish to join, to see whether Europe's Drang nach Osten is going to carry on until it hits the Urals, or wherever, so that Europe becomes something very far from what we consider it to be now. Before expansion exhaustion sets in in the European Union, Turkey provides us with a good object lesson. It is a good country on which to pause and to set against the considerable list of other postulate countries, which grows longer and longer the further east we look.

Lord Dahrendorf: My Lords, the decision at the European Council this weekend must be called momentous. It is also extremely controversial. Some noble Lords have alluded to the degree of controversy on the Continent about the Turkish question. It cannot be exaggerated. Only yesterday, the papers reported that the leader of the German opposition stated that if her party wins the German election in 2006 she will "prevent" Turkish membership of the European Union. It is well known that the Chancellor of Austria has similar views and that there are several other politicians on the Continent who have it in mind that they should prevent Turkish membership. It is therefore important to have this debate, which, looking at the range of views, will be nowhere near as controversial as the debate on the Continent.
	The arguments against Turkish membership are many, but they generally amount to saying that Turkey is too big, too poor and too far away. So far as geography is concerned, it is true that only 5 per cent of Turkey is in Europe, but it does not follow that the European Union would become a Eurasian union if Turkey were accepted. In my view, there are no God-given or even history-given boundaries to Europe. Certainly, organisations that are rather more popular than the European Union, such as UEFA in football matters and Eurovision with its song contest, are not regarded as half Asian.
	There are difficult negotiations ahead. They are of extreme importance. The Copenhagen criteria will form part of them. I would like to underline the issues that my noble friend Baroness D'Souza mentioned will play a part and will have to play a part. But the real issue for those who oppose Turkish membership is different. It is the issue of what the European Union is about. Those who believe that the European Union is about political union soon, and political union in some analogy to the union of nation states with a degree of cohesion within that, are obviously against Turkish membership, never mind what the negotiations yield.
	I believe that it is important to counter that view. It vastly overrates the degree of cohesion between the original members of the European Community and it vastly overrates the degree of cohesion in the present European Union. Beyond that, there are two simple propositions. First, there is no indication, either in fact or in relevant programmatic statements, of the European Union aiming at the kind of political union that characterises nation states. The constitutional treaty, in particular, makes it clear that that is not what the union intends.
	Secondly, in so far as the EU has political objectives, these must be geared to an open community rather than a closed and protectionist bloc. Europe is a step in the direction of wider international co-operation, even a model which sets an example of how that can be achieved. It is, from that point of view, not just a task but a duty of the European Union to extend a welcome to those of its present neighbours who are prepared to accept the acquis communautaire and, above all, the Copenhagen criteria.
	The real conflict about Turkish accession is thus one of concepts of Europe. Many of those who say "No" to Turkish accession tend to have a closed and inward-looking view of Europe, and probably think of the EU as a "pole" in a multipolar world or a counterweight to the United States. Those who say "Yes" to Turkish accession, as I do, want a Europe that reaches out to others. They believe in an open Europe.
	No doubt the outcome of the European Council will be a fudge—it is, after all, a European Council. There will be a fudge about the starting date of negotiations, about a break clause at various points of the process and even about possible alternatives to full membership. I hope that Her Majesty's Government will nevertheless prevail with a view which is based on the notion of an open Europe, and will therefore help Turkey on its arduous path to a liberal order.

Lord Faulkner of Worcester: My Lords, in common with virtually every other speaker, I support the eventual accession of Turkey to the European Union and welcome the progress made towards parliamentary democracy, the improvement in human rights and the abolition of the death penalty in that country. However, it is not about any of those matters that I wish to speak, very briefly, in this debate.
	I should like to draw your Lordships' attention to a matter that was reported to the All-Party Group on War Graves and Battlefield Heritage, which I chaired in your Lordships' House last week. It concerns recent developments on the Gallipoli peninsula. We have learnt that the Turkish National Parks Authority, in breach of decisions reached by the Turkish Cabinet, has just completed the construction of a car park on an area of former Turkish trenches, only 5 metres from the old Anzac front line near the position of Quinn's Post.
	In the process, valuable archaeological evidence of the trench lines and human remains have been lost. In addition, only a short distance away, in the area allocated to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, a rudimentary lavatory has been built. Although now apparently connected to a septic tank, the waste from the lavatory was initially seen to be seeping on to the battlefield and over the Anzac front lines.
	It has also come to our attention that, apparently in pursuit of the same goals that prompted it to try to build gates around the battlefield park earlier this year, the Turkish National Parks Authority intends to turn the central region of the Gallipoli battlefield into a "controlled area". Access by visitors would be allowed only in the company of a state guide, for whose services they would have to pay, making it impossible for the descendants of those who fought there, as well as historians and other interested parties, to move freely across the beaches, hills and ravines where the fighting took place. If that proposal were to be implemented, it would certainly breach the spirit, and possibly even the letter, of the Treaty of Lausanne.
	I am sure that your Lordships will agree that those would be deplorable developments, and they have been widely condemned in the Turkish media. Although the vicious fighting at Gallipoli caused more than half a million casualties, it resulted in very little enmity, subsequently, between the states that took part.
	Today, perhaps ironically, the history of the campaign and the battlefields in particular, acts as a powerful force for reconciliation and understanding, wholly in keeping with the themes adopted by a number of speakers in this debate.
	Will my noble friend make whatever representations she can to the Turkish Government and the Turkish National Parks Authority over the apparently callous treatment of this important world heritage site that binds the people of Turkey and the British Commonwealth so closely together?

Lord Hylton: My Lords, like most previous speakers, I am in favour of opening accession negotiations with Turkey. I should, however, like to mention three of the more important points that will need to be covered.
	Turkish settlers from the mainland will have to be removed from Cyprus unless, perchance, the former owners of their properties have been fully compensated. The Turkish Army also, with all its equipment, will have to go from the island.
	Turkey cannot simultaneously negotiate with the EU and blockade Armenia by land and rail. That is clearly unacceptable behaviour.
	Within Turkey, much will need to be discussed concerning the rule of law and essential human rights, especially those of minorities. As your Lordships know, Kurds make up 20 per cent or more of the population. Although they nearly all speak Turkish, they are ethnically and culturally distinct, and their language is more akin to Iranian.
	As the noble Lord, Lord Rea, mentioned, for 10 years or longer, a savage civil war raged in eastern and south-eastern Turkey. Some 2 million to 3 million people were displaced from villages, mainly to the cities. Even now, those willing to return are prevented from going back to often destroyed villages. The hated system of village guards continues, where villages were not burnt or mined.
	Moderate Kurds who want peace have recently set out their reasonable demands. Above all, they want schools and media in their own language—at present, only fee-paying schools may teach in Kurdish. They seek the right to have their own organisations and institutions, especially where they constitute the local majority. They ask for a general amnesty following the war and greater investment to help the Kurdish provinces and also the people displaced to the west. They would like to take part in revising the existing constitution of Turkey. That present document reflects the unitary state concept of Attaturk as modified by a later military coup.
	I conclude by mentioning one urgent current anxiety. DEHAP is the moderate constitutional political party representing Kurdish interests. It fears, not unreasonably, that it may be officially disbanded once EU negotiations are agreed. This was the fate of three predecessor parties, which were accused, I consider unjustly, of separatism, while some of their MPs were imprisoned. The EU should, I suggest, seek guarantees on this point, and I very much hope that the Minister will be able to give me some reassurance on that point.

Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, it is a great pleasure to have a debate on a European subject which has been constructive and has looked towards the future rather than raking over the coals of the past and of British sovereignty. I hope that we will have some more—perhaps even many more—such debates.
	The issue of Turkey is extremely important. I am not one of those who believes, as Valéry Giscard d'Estaing believes from his childhood geography books, that Europe ends at the Bosphorus—the European side versus the Asian side within Istanbul.
	I recall the myth of Europa and the Bull, in which Zeus captured the maiden from the coast of what is now Turkey and took her to what is now Crete. In those days, what we regard as the core of Europe was regarded by most Europeans, self-confessed Greeks, as the darker forests of the barbarian north. Concepts of Europe have moved around quite a lot over the centuries, and will no doubt move again.
	I have enjoyed successive conferences over the years in Istanbul and Ankara on Turkey's relations with Europe and its European mission, as Turkish élites like to put it. I am immensely impressed with the progress of political reform in Turkey over the past 10 years.
	The current government are the best that Turkey has had for a very long time—the least corrupt and least concerned to reinforce their position through patronage, unlike many of their predecessors. I am enormously impressed by the quality of Turkey's higher education at the top level. I have enjoyed meeting a large number of Turkish students over the years, both young men and young women, and have seen them pursuing their careers back in Ankara and Istanbul.
	It is extremely important that we sustain this welcome process of reform in Turkey, although I am always concerned when I am there about the extent to which the European Union continues to act as a deus ex machina—Europe will save the Turks from themselves and from each other. The secular élite does not trust the Islamists, the Islamists do not trust the army, the army does not trust either of them and the business community does not trust any of them either.
	As we support the process of reform as it continues delicately and difficultly to move forward, it is clear that we must now fulfil the obligation that we made previously to accept Turkey as a candidate and offer to open negotiations. However, we must also recognise how much further Turkish government and society have to go.
	The debate within Turkey so far emphasises very strongly the economic benefits of membership and status issues, which are of huge concern especially among the nationalist and slightly Euro-sceptic element in Turkish society. One has only to read the Turkish English-language press to understand just how nationalist and potentially Euro-sceptic some Turkish élites are. Turkey cannot be treated as a second-class state. Of course, that does not take one into the debate about the real implications of membership. I fear that the debate within Turkey has not yet really got under way on the political implications of membership and of how far EU membership requires a country to take into effect and into its domestic law issues that bite into the domestic and local details of life.
	Modernisation in Turkey is, after all, very welcome and is under way. At a meeting in Istanbul a few weeks ago I was struck to hear Professor Dogu Ergil of Ankara University describe Turkey as four different nations. There are, he said, half a million people within Turkey who are fully westernised and fully international. In addition to that there are a further 5 million whom he called western consumers—the educated, urban bourgeois. However, you have to remember, he said to his western visitors, that there are also 30 million peasants still in the villages and 35 million who are on the fringes of modernity—the first or second generation in the cities who are uncertain of their culture, their identity, how they relate to democracy, and so forth.
	He went on to say that there is of course a great difference between western and eastern Turkey. Those of us who visit Turkey almost never go east of Ankara. Eastern Turkey is two thirds of Turkey geographically and where over half the population still live. That is where many of the problems still lie—over human rights, as the noble Baroness, Lady D'Souza, mentioned—over the implementation of reforms once they are passed, and over the treatment of the Kurds, who are so strongly concentrated in south-eastern Turkey.
	I note and agree with the concern that some Members have about the position of DEHAP, the Kurdish party, and I have heard some members of the current Turkish Government talk honestly about the sheer difficulty of persuading local administrations in south-eastern Turkey to carry into effect the reforms that they are trying to put through at national level. They do not yet have a fully open market economy. I do not entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Patten. It is not only a question of privatisation: it is also the extent to which Turkey has an economy that operates on influence and a number of extremely powerful and rich conglomerates and families whom some of us know. One might say unkindly that it is a little more like the Italian economy than the market economy with which we would all be more comfortable. There is a considerable way to go.
	The influence of the nationalists in Turkey remains very strong. Like others, I have tried to persuade Turkish officials, diplomats and politicians that it is in Turkey's own interests to reduce substantially the number of troops in northern Cyprus, but that is seen as accepting defeat over the Cyprus issue. I have tried to talk to some Turkish nationalists about the Kurdish issue, but many within the Kurdish state still see concessions to the Kurdish language as a denial of Turkey as a nation.
	The noble Lord, Lord Rogan, raised the issue of security. I am doubtful. The stabilisation of the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea region is extremely important to us. A stable and democratic Turkey can contribute a lot to that. The American argument over Turkey's security contribution to the West is now very different from the European argument. The United States under President Bush wants to push Turkey into the European Union so that Turkey can provide a loyal support for American strategic objectives in the Middle East. Many of us do not entirely share those objectives and the new government in Turkey do not entirely share them either, so we should be cautious when we talk about the role of the Turkish army and Turkish air bases.
	There are some hard issues of further enlargement that we all need to debate and I am glad that noble Lords raised some of them. We should also note that Bosnia and Albania are Muslim majority states which will in time come into the European Union. The European Union must clearly adjust substantially to becoming an EU of 30-plus. It is already having to adjust—not entirely successfully—from being an EU of 15 to an EU of 25, but we must advise our Turkish friends that Turkey also has to adjust. An EU that has Iran, Iraq and Syria on its borders and contains the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates is one that will have to ask the Turks to change some of their domestic and foreign policies in order to adjust to broader concerns.
	Therefore, we must say yes to the article of membership. We must resist the Islamophobia and panic about Muslim minorities, which we see cropping up across the European Union, and we must also persuade our publics that this is a worthwhile enterprise. That means that we must insist on the same conditions and standards for Turkey as we have insisted on for others. We cannot accept the nationalist argument one sometimes hears in Ankara; namely, that Turkey is special and, therefore, should have different conditions. It will be a very long process of adjustment in which it is possible that the end may not be what we assume at the beginning.
	The European Union as a whole and its member governments must address openly the limits of future membership and how best to provide for mutually satisfactory relations with neighbouring states. After all, the EU has a developing neighbourhood policy on that; but that is a question for another debate.

Baroness Rawlings: My Lords, it has been a very good and fascinating debate and I am also most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, for initiating it so authoritatively and so well. I agree with him that we have not had enough debate on the subject. We have heard from all the contributions this afternoon what a salient and important issue the proposed accession of Turkey is to the EU, especially with the European Council meeting on Friday.
	The debate has not heard the strong views that we hear from France, Germany or Austria that we heard about from the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf. Few countries' choice of destiny can have more importance for the wider world than that of Turkey. As a nation, she has always been at the crossroads between Europe and Asia, between East and West, has acted as a bridge between two civilisations and as a key historic player both in Europe and the Middle East. Turkey's contribution in terms of history, culture and economics has been crucial for centuries.
	Today we live at a time of acute tension between the West and parts of the Islamic world. At the same time an enlarging European Union is having to ask what constitutes Europe and how its relationship should develop with those countries outside the European Union but on its borders. How the European Union treats Turkey in the course of its accession bid will be crucial to how things develop.
	Turkey is faced with two choices: to become an inward looking Islamic state, or to continue to be a secular state, as it became under Mustafa Kemal, known as Ataturk—as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Patten— close to the European Union but not of it, with the eventual aim of becoming a full member of the European Union. I am glad that Turkey and Prime Minister Erdogan have chosen the latter course.
	We on these Benches, like the Government, have long been supporters of Turkish entry to the European Union, provided the relevant criteria are met. Progress with the Copenhagen criteria has been real and continuing and the Turkish Government have worked hard to move towards meeting the aims of guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and the protection of minorities, as well as the creation and maintaining of a functioning market economy, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis.
	The strategy put in place by the Turkish Government is welcome and progress, although perhaps not as rapid as we might wish, is for all that real. Turkey has already moved to abolish capital punishment and to bring the detention process in line with European standards with the aim of preventing torture, although it may not totally have achieved that, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady D'Souza. Turkey has made efforts to resolve the Cyprus dispute, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, although sadly with limited success—redoubled efforts are needed. Recently she has made difficult and admirable moves to improve Kurdish rights, despite what the noble Lord, Lord Rea, said. Perhaps the most potent symbol of this was the release of Leyla Zana from prison.
	Welcome though all of this is, we hope that Turkey will go further in seeking to find a way for Kurdish identity to express itself within the context of the Turkish state. Similarly, there has recently been considerable debate over proposals to change the penal code and to recriminalise adultery and over proposed changes to the schools system in Turkey. It is inevitable that differences of opinion and focus will emerge.
	One area about which I read recently was that of headscarves in schools, and in particular concerns within Mr Erdogan's own party that he has failed to keep pre-election promises to ease bans on the Islamic headscarf in state schools and, more importantly, to enable graduates of religious schools to enter secular universities. This is a huge change. It saddens me when I think that Turkey was so far ahead in modernising and introduced many reforms at the time of the great Ataturk in the 1920s and 1930s, as described by the noble Lord, Lord Rogan, in his impressive speech. Women were being admitted to various professions and politics and within a short space of time Ataturk even allowed women the vote. In 1935, 17 women were elected deputies to the Grand National Assembly.
	It is good that Turkish universities are doing well, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire. However, personally, I am concerned by the suggestions made about easing entry requirements to secular universities. Turkey's status as a secular state is one of her great strengths. I hope that the Minister will be able to update us on where matters stand on these particular questions, and will reassure us that the Government are continuing to encourage Turkey to stay the course of reform and not allow herself to be diverted from it. That is my only question today.
	I am, however, aware that there are those who are far less welcoming of the prospect of Turkish accession to the European Union. There are those who object on religious grounds; those who say that Turkey is largely outside Europe, as we have heard today; and those who are concerned about the economic implications of the entry to the European Union of a country that is relatively poor and which has a vast population, giving rise to concerns about migration.
	These concerns range from the, in my view, reactive and ill considered—the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, mentioned Bulgaria in that regard—to those more genuine concerns about how the European Union with Turkey as a member would function in practice. As the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, said, in due time the European Union will have to adjust and move away from the outdated view of its own future that is symbolised by the European Union Constitutional Treaty. We all agree that the common agricultural policy has to be modernised. The European Union's currently rigid structures, including funding, will need to be simplified and reformed. Turkey's eventual accession will require reform and changes on both sides—as was pointed out by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth—if it is to be successfully achieved, but I believe that it is an objective worth reforming and changing for.
	We must remember that the European Union that Turkey will join in 10 or 15 years will not be the rigid bureaucratised European Union of today. I support the comment of my noble friend Lord Brittan in his excellent speech that a specified and early date should be sought. We look forward to the day that Turkey will join the European Union, thus sending not only a message but also having an impact on other nations such as Georgia and Ukraine, both of which look forward to closer co-operation with the European Union, as mentioned by my noble friend Lord Biffen in his eloquent speech. Turkey's membership of the European Union would strengthen a valuable link between East and West, send a powerful message of friendship to the Muslim world, demonstrate clearly that a secular, modern democracy and adherence to the Islamic faith were not incompatible, and would open up new and exciting opportunities for all of us.
	If we understand the Bosporus as the natural bridge between East and West, Turkey can be a powerful force for good in the world and in the European Union. As my noble friend Lord Inglewood said in his well argued speech, perhaps this is the summation of Ataturk's work. I hope that we will all seize that opportunity.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, for introducing the debate this afternoon. I very much welcome the opportunity to debate Turkey's progress towards accession to the European Union. On 17 December, the European Council will decide whether to open accession negotiations. The decision is one of enormous significance, not just for Turkey but for the United Kingdom, the EU and the whole region. As the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf, remarked, it is momentous.
	However, it is a decision for the Heads of Government on Thursday evening and Friday morning. We shall all be much better informed on Turkey's position in 48 hours' time. Let me be clear: our Prime Minister will support the opening of accession negotiations with Turkey. We have long supported its candidature and we believe that it has earned that support. I am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Rawlings, expressed her party's support in the way that she did.
	I need to stress that the decision to be taken in the next two days does not concern membership. That is a matter for negotiation—painstaking, detailed and possibly very lengthy, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth and the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf, remarked. In our view, Turkey has earned the right to open those negotiations.
	The noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, argued that Turkey is not really a European country. If I may say so, his argument is about 40 years too late, as the noble Lord, Lord Brittan of Spennithorne, reminded us, because the proposal for Turkey's EU membership is not a new concept. The EU-Turkey Association Agreement in 1963 offered this perspective 10 years before the United Kingdom joined the then EEC. In 1987, the Council accepted Turkey's membership in principle but rejected it on the grounds of political and economic shortcomings. At Helsinki in 1999, the EU agreed that,
	"Turkey was a candidate state destined to join the Union on the basis of the same criteria as applied to other candidate states".
	In December 2002, the EU told Turkey that it would open accession negotiations without delay if, by December 2004, Turkey had fulfilled the Copenhagen political criteria.
	On 6 October 2004, the Commission clearly stated that Turkey had done so. Now is the time for the European Union to deliver on its promises. It would be immensely damaging to the EU's credibility with Turkey, other candidate states and, indeed, the Muslim world if we now reneged on these explicit promises.
	As some of your Lordships have acknowledged, the transformation of Turkey over the past few years has been remarkable: in human rights, the rule of law and democracy. The Commission report of 6 October highlighted a growing consensus in favour of liberal democracy. A positive decision in the next two days will help to ensure that we lock in these valuable gains and allow Turkey to continue to build on them. A stable, democratic Turkey, anchored firmly in Europe, will significantly enhance Europe's, and thereby the United Kingdom's, security.
	We must, as the noble Lord, Lord Biffen, argued, look at how Turkey's membership would affect the position of current members. I believe that Turkish membership offers the prospect of co-operation on terrorism, European defence, energy security, and the fight against crime and illegal immigration. Perhaps most importantly, as a number of your Lordships have said, Turkey can play a key role in Europe's engagement with the Muslim world. If the EU accepts Turkey on the same conditions as the other member states, that is a very powerful demonstration that there is no clash of civilisations, that the EU is not a "Christian club", as the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, referred to it, and that religious tolerance and integration are essentially a part of European life.
	The noble Lord, Lord Patten, questioned that reasoning. He called it a fallacy. I do not want to make extravagant claims but I believe that if, after all these years and after all the efforts of the reformers in Turkey, we were now to reject its candidature, Muslim opinion worldwide would think that we Europeans apply very different criteria to a Muslim country from those that we apply to non-Muslim countries.
	The noble Lord, Lord Brittan of Spennithorne, was right that security and defence criteria are not reason enough, but it is important to remember that Turkey has had a crucial role as an ally and a partner, as was so effectively argued by the noble Lord, Lord Rogan. Since joining NATO in 1952, Turkey has been active in promoting stability internationally, recently participating in peacekeeping operations in the Balkans and playing a key part in NATO forces in Afghanistan. Turkey will lead the international security assistance force there from February. It has also contributed to peace missions in Bosnia, Herzegovina and the republic of Macedonia, and it is currently contributing to the peacekeeping force in Bosnia.
	The noble Lord, Lord Dykes, said that Turkey's sheer size and complexity offered huge challenges. By the same token, one could argue that Turkey offers huge potentials too. It has an enormous economic potential, as the noble Lord, Lord Rogan, said. A youthful labour market of 70 million people with currently low levels of foreign direct investment offers new markets and new investment opportunities for the United Kingdom and for European business. It is not so much a question of Turkey not being the liability that some people fear, as the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, argued; Turkey offers a real opportunity. It is growing by more than 10 per cent a year at present, backed by solid macro-economic reforms and motivated by the ever-closer prospect of integration with Europe. Trade between the UK and Turkey now tops £4 billion and is increasing at an annual rate of some 35 per cent.
	I come to the heart of the decision that the EU leaders face in the course of the next couple of days. The question is not whether Turkey is European or a candidate for EU membership. The UK and the EU have already agreed that officially in 1987, 1999 and 2002. Nor is the question whether Turkey is ready for membership. Negotiations are likely to take many years, by which time Turkey and the EU will look very different. Nor is it about security or immigration, the CAP, religion, or old or new Europe, although some would like to shift the argument on to those issues.
	The question is exactly what my noble friend Lord Dubs articulated: has Turkey fulfilled the Copenhagen political criteria necessary to open accession negotiations? The European Commission's view, as expressed in its report, is unequivocally "yes". The view expressed in the report of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament is "yes". I assure the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf, that the opinion of this Government is also "yes". The European Council should agree to open accession negotiations without delay.
	My noble friend Lord Clinton-Davis was highly persuasive in his address to your Lordships on questions of Turkish reform—arguments which were reinforced by the noble Lords, Lord Dykes and Lord Wallace of Saltaire. The basis for the Commissions' positive assessment is also highly persuasive. The changes brought in in Turkey over the past two-and-a-half years have been revolutionary. Since the AK party came to power, the Turkish Parliament has passed a plethora of constitutional and legislative reforms, including, as many have mentioned, the abolition of the death penalty and measures to root out torture and incommunicado detention.
	The noble Lords, Lord Brittan and Lord Maclennan of Rogart, were right to remind us that the Turkish Government have introduced greater freedoms of expression, association and religion, including the start of Kurdish language broadcasting and teaching. Turkish law now recognises the precedence of international law in human rights. The Government have appointed a civilian head of the National Security Council and removed the military from governmental bodies. NGOs are now consulted on the legislative process and have an increasing say in human rights monitoring. As the noble Baroness, Lady Rawlings, said, the new Turkish penal code brings together many of these reforms and also makes significant advances in new areas—for example, in the area of women's rights, which so exercised my noble friend Lady Uddin, and the long-standing problems of honour killings and rape are also addressed.
	The noble Baroness, Lady D'Souza, rightly reminded us of issues of torture. I remind her that the Commission concluded that considerable efforts have been made to strengthen the fight against torture, that torture is no longer systematic in Turkey and that the Government's efforts are leading to a decline in the instances of torture. We are not complacent about this, but there is growing evidence of improved implementation, and of course the Turkish Government are working closely with the Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture.
	We must not lose sight of the political criteria if the decision is for Turkey to start negotiations. The noble Lord, Lord Monson, will not, I fear, be surprised to learn that I disagreed with the entirely new criteria that he sought to introduce in taking the decision. As the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, said, Turkey must sustain and advance its impressive progress. The thorough implementation of reforms will take time to filter through to every Turkish police station, every Turkish court, every prison and eventually every individual.
	However, the Turkish Government are making gradual and substantive progress through the ministerial EU Reform Monitoring Group, increased numbers of human rights boards, and more training and education of the police and the judiciary. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady D'Souza, that the EU will support Turkey in its continued efforts through rigorous monitoring, targeted assistance and training, education and institution-building.
	As the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, and the noble Baroness, Lady D'Souza, indicated, we must not allow Turkey to take its foot off the pedal. The EU must harness the momentum that has transformed Turkey in the past few years and help to extend it to other areas in the Turkish administration and economy.
	My noble friend Lord Rea concentrated on Turkish treatment of the Kurds. As the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, said, significant steps have been taken to extend the democratic rights of the Turkish people. Individuals can now register names and attend private language courses in Kurdish. Kurdish newspapers and music cassettes are freely available, and broadcasting in Kurdish has started. Kurdish plays and concerts are also taking place. I remind my noble friend Lord Rea that prominent Kurds such as Leyla Zana and the mayor of Diyarbakir have stated that the majority of Kurds see a fully democratic Turkey within the European Union as offering the best prospect of guaranteeing their democratic rights.
	The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, rightly raised the issues around DEHAP. The pro-Kurdish political party stands accused of becoming a focal point of actions against the principles of democracy, equality and the rule of law. However, the United Kingdom has welcomed the positive steps that Turkey has taken to remove the restrictions on freedom of expression and on political organisations. We very much hope that those will be reflected in the outcome of the current DEHAP trial.
	The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth raised the difficulties experienced by religious minorities. He is right; some non-Muslim religious communities continue to encounter obstacles. A new law on foundations is being prepared that should go some way towards remedying those difficulties. The Turkish Government have repeated their commitment to removing obstacles to the reopening of the Heybeliada Greek Orthodox seminary and to the establishment and running of a number of churches. I agreed very strongly with the right reverend Prelate's point about the Abrahamic religions and their traditions of hospitality being a way in which communities could reach out to each other. My noble friend Lady Uddin takes a great deal of interest in that as well.
	The noble Lord, Lord Brittan, raised the points of objection about Turkish membership creating what has been described as a flood of immigrants into the European Union. Those fears have been raised over just about every expansion of the European Union, and on just about every occasion they have proved unsubstantiated. In any case, we would expect transitional periods on free movement of workers, as were available to the new member states.
	Some noble Lords were understandably concerned about Cyprus. The decision in the next couple of days will be based on whether Turkey meets the political criteria. The Cyprus settlement and associated issues are not a precondition for opening negotiations. As the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, said, there are many important areas on which Turkey, Cyprus and Greece still need to make progress to reach a satisfactory conclusion. However, I agree very strongly with the noble Lord, Lord Rogan, that we cannot add a new criterion for opening negotiations at this stage. That includes the issues around Armenia raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton.
	My noble friend Lord Dubs reminded us of the constructive approach adopted by the Turkish Government on Cyprus, in terms of the settlement and the negotiations earlier this year. They encouraged the Turkish-Cypriot community to restart the negotiations on the basis of the Annan plan.
	I agree with my noble friend Lord Faulkner that war graves are very important, but they are not part of the European negotiations. I assure him that the British Embassy's officials have recently been in contact with the representatives of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and the director of the Office of Australian War Graves about the site in Gallipoli. The representative of the commission has been to Quinn's Post in the past few days and described it as being in a very good condition.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Rawlings, said that she had only one question, which was about the secular nature of the universities. There was a discussion on entry requirements for the secular universities for the students from religious high schools over the summer. As I understand it, it was vetoed by President Sezer.
	The noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, raised the issue of the French referendum. Of course the French will hold a referendum. It is up to every individual member state to decide how to ratify each accession treaty. I remind him that the French held a referendum on UK accession in 1972, so there is nothing particularly remarkable in it.
	I have no doubt that Turkey can and will make a huge contribution to the European Union. I am delighted that the Official Opposition and the Liberal Democrats believe, as the Government believe, that the prize is enormous. The indication was that most noble Lords believed that, too. Turkey is a majority-Muslim state that embraces democracy and modernity and shares its sovereignty with others in the EU. It is a strategic partner that will help us to tackle the global security threats that we face and enhance the EU's engagement with the wider region. It is a dynamic economy offering new opportunities for trade and investment. Those are potentially huge assets for the European Union.
	Of course Turkey has not met all the criteria for membership yet. The enlargement process is designed to ensure that the momentum of reform continues across the board. But I remind those sceptical of Turkey's progress towards accession of another point that Leyla Zana made in her letter to the president of the European Parliament, Pat Cox. As noble Lords recall, she was imprisoned in 1994 under a previous government and was released earlier this year. She wrote that she would prefer to be a prisoner in a country negotiating EU membership than free in a country barred from the EU. That is a wonderfully powerful message about the importance of Turkey's EU perspective to its people, including its Kurdish people.
	For those reasons, we very much hope that the European Union will agree within the next 48 hours to start accession negotiations with Turkey. We should not let sceptics stand in the way of Turkey's second great modernisation. Instead, we should help Turkey to move forward to fulfil Ataturk's vision of a European destiny.

Lord Cobbold: My Lords, we have had a fascinating debate, and I thank all noble Lords who have taken part. Many said that it was timely to have a discussion on these problems. We all generally back the Government in their decision to move ahead over the next two days to opening formal negotiations with Turkey.
	As many speakers said, Turkey has done an enormous amount to prepare itself for possible accession to the Union, but we all agree that there is still quite a way to go, so it will be a few years before the final terms and conditions of Turkey's membership can be agreed. However, it is clearly a country with huge potential and is an important ally. Creating a prosperous secular and democratic country where Turkey is located is of enormous importance, and of economic benefit both to Turkey and to the rest of Europe.
	The absorption of Turkey into the European Union is a bigger morsel than the Union has had to face until now. It may require one or two changes, but I hope that it all goes well and does not in any sense, in the long term, destabilise the existing and important progress that has been made in Europe. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Football

Lord Faulkner of Worcester: rose to call attention to the state of English football; and to move for Papers.
	My Lords, this is the first debate on football that we have held in the House since the Unstarred Question asked by my noble friend Lord Clark of Windermere on the ownership of Football League clubs in July 2002. Many of the structural weaknesses in the English game identified in that debate by my noble friend and other speakers remain, but a number of positive points about the state of football today are worth making at the outset.
	First, on the playing side, we can take pride in the fact that no fewer than four English clubs have progressed to the knockout stage of the UEFA championship. Despite the disappointments of Euro 2004 in Portugal, the England national side seems to be on track, for the moment at least, for qualification in the 2006 World Cup.
	Linked to that, the reputation of England fans abroad has improved considerably and the incidence of disorder at domestic matches is now relatively rare. To a great extent, this is due to the success of the banning order measures in the Football (Disorder) Act 2000 and the subsequent amendment Act of 2002. An example of how crowd behaviour has improved is the almost universal abhorrence of racism in the sport. On the few occasions that it does occur, as happened at Blackburn recently, it is dealt with firmly and effectively—with those guilty held to account and banned from the game. Would that foreign football associations were as conscientious as ours are! The treatment of black English players in club matches and internationals in certain parts of Europe remains a disgrace.
	One significant problem remains at home—the serious under-representation of ethnic minorities in the management and administration of the game. There are few in club management and none on the FA Council. In that context, I pay tribute to the work of the Independent Football Commission, whose work in this area has led to the publication of a 10 point plan on tackling diversity in football, enlisting the help of the Commission for Racial Equality in the process. We are light years away from where we were in March 1998, when the Football Task Force, on which I served as vice-chairman, published its first report on Eliminating racism from football, which successive Ministers for Sport endorsed wholeheartedly and whose recommendations the game, to its credit, has largely adopted.
	There has also been significant progress in implementing the recommendations in the task force's second report on disabled access and involvement in football—another positive tick in the box. The Supporters Trust movement continues to grow. According to the excellent paper, published on 25 November, by the Football Governance Research Centre at Birkbeck, there are now 70 trusts in the Premier League, the Football League and the football Conference; and a quarter of the clubs have a supporter representative on their boards. Here the Government deserve a pat on the back, because that movement would never have taken off had they not taken seriously and implemented the policy recommended by the task force.
	There are three further positives which I will mention before I turn to the problems. The first is the decision by the football authorities to extend the life of the Independent Football Commission indefinitely. Unfortunately, they have not yet agreed to review its terms of reference or extend its investigatory powers. But given the reluctance to set up the commission in the first place and the obstacles that were placed in its path in the early days, the football authorities' decision marks a step forward. I was told last week by the IFC chairman, Professor Derek Fraser, that between two-thirds and three-quarters of its 57 recommendations have been accepted. One of the most important was the "fit and proper person" test for directors—now, at last, accepted by the FA, the Premier League and the Football League. This recommendation was also contained in the report of the All-Party Group on Football on English football and its finances, published in February.
	The Football League has made real progress over the past year on a range of other governance issues, which I welcome. These include sporting sanctions—deductions of points—from clubs entering administration, a wage cap on clubs in the two lower divisions, the registration and publication of fees paid by clubs to agents and improvements to the corporate governance of the Football League board. This concentration on better governance has taken place under Sir Brian Mawhinney's chairmanship of the Football League, and I congratulate him for what he has achieved thus far.
	The Football Association has also made some progress in these areas. Its Financial Advisory Unit is up and running, and the Financial Advisory Committee to which it reports has at last been established, under the independent chairmanship of Kate Barker. The FA Annual Review tells us that it has an extensive work programme for the coming year, covering a range of issues similar to those already addressed by the Football League, including a code of corporate governance and good practice, on which all directors must report and research into a domestic licensing system.
	The Football League has also proposed new safeguards regarding clubs' security of tenure at their home grounds and rules to prevent a repetition of the scandalous decision by the owners of Wimbledon Football Club to abandon the community in south-west London which had supported the club for over 100 years and move to a hockey stadium in Milton Keynes. As a former director of that club, I feel particularly bitter about that; however, I rejoice in the success of the new club—AFC Wimbledon—started and owned by the supporters, which is now making its way up the pyramid of non-league football. On 13 November, AFC Wimbledon broke the English league record by remaining unbeaten in 76 consecutive league matches. They are five points clear at the top of the Ryman League Division One and it will not be long before AFC Wimbledon on the way up pass Milton Keynes Dons on the way down.
	The FA is also calling for greater transparency in the role of agents and their relationships with managers and coaching staff. This cannot come a moment too soon. We can glimpse at the scale of the problem following Manchester United's decision to reveal that it paid £5.5 million to agents last year; £1.2 million of that went to Ruud van Nistelrooy's agent, Rodger Linse, for negotiating his new five-year contract and was on top of the £468,000 the club still owes him for doing the last one.
	It is an extraordinary business: agents are paid for bringing a player to a club and then are paid again for negotiating the terms of his contract. As David Conn, the respected writer on the Independent, in his column on 2 October this year, stated:
	"Football agents are paid mighty commissions on huge sums of money, often earned as middle men, because chairmen won't, or don't, talk to each other. Players' agents are paid by clubs simply for agreeing to sit down and extract millions from them, then paid for that too".
	It is a scandal—one that the FA and the Premier League must tackle in the way the Football League has done.
	Payments to agents, the inflated transfer market, and the excessive wages paid to some Premiership players, and indeed club directors, are examples of how too much of the extra money that has come into the game, principally from satellite television deals, is being creamed off at the top, with insufficient distributed to football at lower levels. The All-Party Group on Football proposed a doubling from 5 to 10 per cent of the Premiership's total broadcasting revenue to be redistributed to clubs in the Football League and the football Conference.
	There are other consequences of so much wealth and power being concentrated in the hands of the Premiership elite. One of these is the growth in the number of non-British players in Premiership teams, because it reduces the opportunity for home-grown players to come through from the ranks of the lower leagues. As an article in the Times on 6 December pointed out, of the players who have played in the Premiership this season, only 38.6 per cent are English. Compare that with Serie A, where the number of Italians is 68.5 per cent, or the 70.4 per cent who are Spanish in la Liga.
	As anyone who reads the back pages of our newspapers knows very well—and sometimes the front and inside pages too—the Football Association has had a torrid time this year. I wish the new chief executive, Brian Barwick, every success when he starts in the new year. However, it is worrying that the structural review of the FA that was promised in the summer is still not underway.
	The most important area that needs to be looked at is the corporate governance arrangements within the FA, particularly the composition of the FA Board. Out of a membership of 12, six come from clubs within the Premier League and the Football League. How can conflicts of interest possibly be avoided when the board is discussing such matters as FA Cup revenue and match arrangements, payments to clubs for players in the England team, punishment of players found guilty of doping or disciplinary offences, the release of players for friendly internationals, and so on?
	One of the strongest critics of current governance arrangements seems to be Mr Rupert Lowe, who is chairman of Southampton FC and a member of the FA Board. Back in August, he attempted to persuade the chairmen of the FA, the Premier League and the Football League to sign a letter to FA Council members which contained these interesting words:
	"The current structure indubitably fails the accepted tests of Corporate Governance applied outside of sports organisations".
	I could not agree more. However, I have difficulty in supporting Mr Lowe's solution, which would have given even more control over the England team, the Community Shield and the FA Cup to the rich and powerful Premier League clubs, especially given their track record of opposition to the Independent Football Commission and, in earlier times, to the FA's financial advisory unit.
	There are only two possible ways forward. One is to go down the route of statutory regulation. Because they are so disillusioned with how things are at the moment, that idea is surprisingly backed by a majority of clubs outside the Premier League surveyed in a follow-up to the report of the All-Party Group on Football on the game's finances. It is also backed by the Football Supporters Federation. But it is one which I know that the Government are reluctant to take on, and I can understand why. However, I would say to my noble friend Lord Davies of Oldham, who is replying to this debate, that the Independent Football Commission, suitably enhanced and independently funded, could undoubtedly do the job of independent regulator, if that is what the Government choose to do.
	The alternative is for the FA to do what, so far, divisions within the game have made it impossible for it to do, certainly since the formation of the Premier League, which is to regulate all football in England. I support the call of the Football Supporters' Federation for,
	"the creation of one unified governing body to replace the current multiplicity of leagues and associations".
	To me that makes so much sense: it would require the Premier League and the Football League to surrender some of the autonomy which they currently enjoy for the FA to establish a supervisory and regulatory board on which there is a majority of non-executive directors with no financial interests that could conflict with their duties, in marked contrast with the FA board of today. It is possible to envisage, with an effective system of self-regulation, the IFC acting as a new board's investigative and reporting agency, but we are a long way from that at the moment. That is why the FA's structural review is so important.
	Despite all its difficulties, and thanks to the unsung efforts of thousands of people who give of their time freely and without reward, football in England is astonishingly popular. It is still the national game, played and followed by millions of people, old and young, rich and poor, men and women. But it could be so much better. It is not helped by ambitious individuals using the political dark arts of spin and leak to promote their own cause or to denigrate those who were doing their best. The whispering campaign against Geoff Thompson, the FA's chairman, is but one example.
	What I hope that we can demonstrate by this debate is that we in this House are on the side of those striving for improvement while maintaining sporting and other standards of decency and for uniting the elements of the game to achieve one common purpose. I beg to move for Papers.

Lord Lyell: My Lords, what a pleasure it is to follow the marathon man, the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, who has been sitting in his place for about three hours now. I shall attempt to curtail my remarks so that he may take a reasonable bath at a reasonable time.
	It shows the enormous spread of your Lordships' House that it takes a Scot—myself—to bat at number two, straight after the noble Lord. I declare my interest straight off; it is nothing to do with England. I am honorary patron of Forfar Athletic Football Club in Scotland, which attracts on a good day about the same number as your Lordships' House at Question Time. On a bad day, when the polar bears come down from the north, I assure your Lordships that a warm welcome is available there.
	The noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, pointed out in great detail, with enormous knowledge and with great passion, what is happening in the game in England as he sees it. The game is watched by many of us—by millions of us, not just in your Lordships' House but all over the country and perhaps even round the world. Football, that extraordinary game, is played, watched, admired and perhaps loathed by millions. Above all, in this country, it is played by millions of small boys of all ages. Looking at my noble friend Lady Morris, I can add that a remarkable amount of ladies' football is played. Indeed, last week I was abroad with the Inter-Parliamentary Union and noted a game between Germany and the United States in Portland, Oregon. I have to say that I was pretty scared, because I thought that they were American footballers—but they were female soccer players, apparently. But it shows that players all over the world of both sexes enjoy themselves.
	These players do various things with a football. I am told that they kick the ball, trap it, pass it and juggle. My continental friends say that they even caress the ball. That is not awfully well known north of the Border, where they tend to get rid of it quite quickly; indeed, the tendency is to play the man first, in some cases. But, for millions of small boys and girls, that is perhaps a part of playing football. I wonder why they do it. I do not think that it is just for their own good or following the precepts of staying fit. There I take a quiet dig at the right honourable gentleman the Prime Minister in his tracksuit this morning; if he really wishes to prove his courage and fitness, perhaps he might follow my noble friend Lord Moynihan and myself—and perhaps the number 10 speaker tonight, the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester—in skiing in the first week of January. That is a real test of courage and sportsmanship. But that is for another evening, when we discuss that type of sport.
	But what are all those boys and girls playing football for? I do not believe that it is just for the betterment of their souls. The noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, pointed out that football is a world game; it is enormously popular all over the world. But a huge number of boys and girls play football; they work, train, run and sweat—and a lot of people help them in pretty harsh conditions outside. Why? Because, perhaps, they have a dream. They dream that they might emulate a particular player or team which, in many cases, they may simply have read or heard about, or they may have watched them live or seen them on the television. Is it loyalty to a particular player, or to a team? If to a team, do they join what I call the clan or the tribe?
	As for loyalty to a particular club, let me tell your Lordships a tale of two little boys. I do not refer to the popular Christmas song of some years ago by Mr Rolf Harris, that noted Australian artist. One young boy, of 10 or 11 years, was shopping one morning. What happened? An appalling bomb was detonated by the IRA in Warrington. The young boy was fatally injured, and he died. But the one thing that mattered to him was a football jersey; it was a blue jersey, and the club sent to his funeral the director, the manager and the first team players to support that boy. Why?
	I refer to another small boy. On 21 September 1986, there was a big game. Manchester United were playing—and when they came out there was a full house. The home team brought two mascots, one boy and one girl. Someone sitting next to me said, "Do you see that little boy, he's not too well. The tall one is his sister. The little boy has leukaemia, but today will be a great day for him". Manchester United lost 3–1 to the home team and that little boy went home stuffed with goodies, sweeties, toffees, and carrying mascots and flags. He was still wearing his jersey; perhaps it was slightly sweaty, perhaps it had stuff spilled down it and perhaps it was slightly muddy. His mother tucked him into bed and he said, "Mum, it were a great night. We beat them!" I presume that he said "beat them", but perhaps what he said might have been a little tougher than that. She tucked him into bed and he died that night.
	That is what the jersey meant to those two little boys. It will mean it to millions of other people, similarly. That might be mawkish, but that is what supporting a football team meant to those two little boys, and your Lordships will find tales like theirs throughout England, Britain and the world.
	If your Lordships are looking for a small boy here, there are at least one or two—certainly one. I have to tell your Lordships that I am on to my seventh club jersey, which I wear in January when skiing. They have various tooth-marks in them; I have crashed into ski gates, walls and things like that. But I support my team. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, will make his own speech, but when he does so he may not have time to tell your Lordships how he was taken short last week after about 60 minutes of the game that he was watching. His neighbour told me that the noble Lord left his seat and so may have been unaware of the result. The noble Lord may be able to advise the House about that.
	However, I am able to tell noble Lords that his club is also my club. It has a marvellous programme, which follows the programme from the Premier League, called Football in the Community. The Premier League has been kind enough to give me a sheet which says:
	"Everton Football in the Community became a registered charity . . . targeting various social agendas, including homelessness, older people . . . crime prevention"—
	I hope I am not looking in the mirror—
	"health . . . and education".
	It goes on to say,
	"the club has just begun a new project aiming to reduce the drop out of young people at 17 from learning".
	I left school at 17. I struggled to carry on with chartered accountancy and other studies. That may have been relevant to me, but it is also relevant to many other young men. The Premier League was good enough to send me a complete compendium of all the Premier League clubs and what they do for Football in the Community.
	The club that I support does not consist only of supporters who enjoy watching, listening, hearing, speaking and making friends; we are also part of the club. The club, and I believe every other Premier League club worth its salt, has a very strong aura and a strong ethos of supporting the youth. I believe that the youth academy of Everton, under Mr Ray Hall, from the Tamlin family, is second to none in producing its own players.
	Where does all this lead? At the weekend it lead to a report in the press—one of the tabloid newspapers— that this particular team has a bond that cannot be bought and a quality beyond price. That links the team together, but it also links the supporters.
	I can say without any humbug that football in England has enriched my life. I have made many friends. The frothing of the media over players' pay and players' behaviour is by the by. Dream the dream and make friends. One of the friends referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, the president of world football, came to your Lordships' House last October and gave me a small present, which I shall hand over to the Government Whips. It has red and yellow cards in it. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, for giving us this opportunity to express our thoughts about English football. There will be many more who will be able to say that and I am very glad to support him.

Lord Addington: My Lords, I felt that I would be a fraud to talk about football, until it was pointed out at our Whips' meeting that the noble Lord did not specify which type of football he meant—Union or League, possibly? I approach football as part of the continuum of sport. It is the largest and richest part of sport. I regard it as a sport, and that will colour my comments today.
	The noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, went down a path that I could not begin to follow: the governance of professional football. Professional sport operates in a vacuum in which the normal rules of accounting, and in some cases legality, do not appear to apply. Of late, we have started to address that, and football is the lead sport doing that.
	As regards sporting clubs that attract a degree of fanatical support, football clubs are at the forefront. Rugby League clubs may come second, whereas only one or two Rugby Union clubs and possibly some cricket clubs tend to inspire such support. Hundreds of thousands of people turn up to support their club simply as supporters, without having any stake in the club. The move of Wimbledon to Milton Keynes probably displayed the legal limitations.
	When my party considered its sports policy, it thought long and hard about what it could usefully do. The conclusion was that professional sport had to look to itself first. Do we want to regulate such a business activity, or do we want to dive in and make it special, even though we cannot? We could not see how to do that usefully or where we could draw the line. Should we allow the structures to be supported for ever more and allow their debts to be cancelled? No. We agreed, as I believe virtually every political party has, that we should give most of our support to amateur sports clubs. They give us the greatest benefit in social interaction and health benefits. Professional clubs are now involved in that process, and the noble Lord has been a key player in ensuring that professional football knows that it is expected to do that.
	On the recent issue of racism in football, the sport can take real pride in the effectiveness of the anti-racism structures in football. One cannot stand apart and say, "What goes on in the stands has nothing to do with us". Football has to address the issue and be active in it. As a sport and as part of the sport continuum, football is our biggest showcase.
	On the frightening statistic given by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, of only 38 per cent of players being English—the statistic for British players may be slightly better—I suggest that the game should look to its youth development. He also mentioned the agents, the middlemen. If everyone spoke the same language, I am sure that the fees could be cut down. Basically, association football, the big boy, has to put its own house in order; it must look more to its amateur body and take it more seriously. Those people further down the list have to address that and pump more back into the sport. The situation is better than it was; they are doing something, but they are still not doing enough. We have to make them take those responsibilities seriously, but how do we do that, if we do not want to get involved in day-to-day legislation? We can support everything that they do.
	Supporters Direct, the body that sets up the trust that has influence over the fans, is probably the most positive thing to come out of the English football system for a very long time. It means that those who, with religious zeal, follow their club are involved to a real extent in the management and ownership of their own organisations and clubs. The Government should help, and they should provide seed money for other sports. I do not know how far development in Rugby League has taken place, but football is the next place for such models.
	Small clubs are dominated by one or two owners who, if they are not making money out of football, may suddenly think, "What are the redevelopment costs?". If one is a straightforward businessman and regards sport as a business, that is a perfectly legitimate use of one's assets. If it is more than that, one must give them some support for it not happening. We find ourselves in a very odd situation. Local or central government, or some other source, must be found to help and to support those groups.
	As the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, said, football has to ensure that its internal governance is better. Its comfortable position is a historical anachronism. All sports have the capacity to say that they have always done things in a particular way. We tack bits on the end and then the structures are confusing. All sports go through that process. Football is where the money is and so should set an example. If we can encourage people, that is what we should do.
	Association football is a very good sport for general involvement through amateur sports clubs. Women can play it without fear of damage because there is no upper body contact. You are not supposed to have such contact, which means that it is probably one of the best traditional male sports in which to get women involved. If the FA can encourage greater participation in female sport, the Government's cause will be served tremendously well. It is one of the great areas in which it can assist.
	Also football has been—to coin a phrase—"the sexiest sport" for the past few years. England winning the Rugby Union World Cup has possibly taken off a little bit of gloss and one or two scandals and the near folding of Leeds United, one of the bigger clubs, may have taken a little bit off the current hype of football. But even on a downturn, football could swallow up its nearest two competitors. We must make sure that the FA is encouraged, supported and helped to assist the junior parts of its clubs.
	Sport is one of those areas in politics in which we end up discovering that we are incredibly close to agreement with each other. If the Government can take the first steps, they may find a great deal more consensus than—I shall probably get into terrible trouble for saying this—the spin doctors from the various parties would like.
	Policy differences between us are generally ones of emphasis. The Government would say "school sport", and we would say "school-age sport". They would say that the schools lead and we would say that the clubs lead, but the two have to be linked. We must encourage them to make the links. Association football is probably the sport that should show the way. I hope that when the noble Lord addresses the issues about football, he will pay attention to how the Government are helping those amateur clubs, because all amateur clubs basically have the same problem.

The Lord Bishop of Chester: My Lords, I was not quite sure what to expect in this debate, but I did not anticipate two supporters of Forfar Athletic contributing to it.
	One of the great thinkers of the early Church, Tertullian, faced with the increasing hostility of the Greco-Roman world towards the emerging Church, once famously declared:
	"What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?"
	Yet the Church came to see that it could not stand apart from the culture and society in which it was set, despite the rising tide of persecution. A few generations later, Athens and Jerusalem concluded a concordat which in due course became a major shaping influence on European civilisation, and that in turn gave birth to football.
	I would not want to say that football is now a greater shaping influence on our country than the Christian faith. I am told that the weekly audience for "Songs of Praise" is still greater than that for "Match of the Day".
	However, we have seen in recent years a tendency for religious imagery to gather here and there around what is sometimes slightly euphemistically called "the game". One recalls Bill Shankly's famous remark about football. Asked whether it was as important as life and death, he said that it was much more important than that. One thinks, indeed, of the contemporary news of the rather tasteless casting by Madame Tussauds of David Beckham and his wife as Joseph and Mary. Some years ago Eric Cantona, the famous Manchester United player, was put in the place of the risen Christ in the famous painting of "The Resurrection" by Piero della Francesca. That was a little before his two-footed tackle on a supporter who taunted him, which rather changed his image.
	I am not here to knock the passion with which fans support their clubs. But I do want to ask how the passion with which the game is associated might be of even greater benefit to society at large than has already been expressed—for example, by the noble Lord, Lord Lyell. I declare a lifelong commitment to West Bromwich Albion, and, indeed, as they prop up the Premiership, a belief that the age of miracles has not yet passed.
	Perhaps one or two other noble Lords will recall Jeff Astle's left foot strike just outside the penalty area which enabled West Brom to win the FA cup in 1968, when I was "nowt but a lad". He, of course, is best remembered for missing an open goal against Brazil in the 1970 World Cup final at a rather critical juncture in the game. He died a couple of years ago, partly, apparently, from the injuries he sustained from repeatedly heading the ball—often, I am glad to say, into the back of the net. In retirement, Jeff Astle was a window cleaner. His van bore the emblem, "Jeff Astle, Window cleaner—Never misses the corners".
	So, for a lifetime's love of the game, what are my hopes for the future, apart from a miracle for West Brom this season? Let me briefly mention three. First, football today illustrates one of the wider features of our society, where freedom, choice and opportunity tend to magnify the distance between winners and losers. That is true if you look at teams, clubs or the overall finances of the game or individual players. The money available from television since the advent of satellite television has tended to go mainly to a few clubs at the top. I entirely endorse the comment that a greater proportion should be fed down into other areas of the game, not least to support the amateur game.
	Perhaps you cannot ultimately buck the market, but I believe that the circumstances of the game today call for more ways to be found for the top clubs and top players to be seen to support the game at lower levels and at the grass roots and, indeed, to support the society which accords them so much success in the first place.
	Today we rightly have concerns about teenage health and obesity. We are aware of the widespread reduction in physical education in schools, which seems to be very hard to reverse, and the loss of school playing fields. In a different area, I was astonished a year or so ago when visiting a young offender institution near my diocese to discover that healthy young men aged 18 to 21 had only limited or non-existent opportunities to play sport. How short-sighted so much of our penal policy appears to be.
	The professional clubs could make a huge contribution to social needs today beyond the commendable efforts which already exist and to which reference has been made. The greater wealth of the professional clubs should enable them to do more and to soften the effect of the great disparities of wealth which the modern world encourages.
	The recent report from the all-party group reveals that 52 per cent of clubs have formal links with schools and 38 per cent of players' contracts require them to participate in such links. I should like to see higher percentages and for links to be made with places of greater social need in our society, including the young offender institutions, to which I have referred.
	Secondly, I should like the clubs and players and those responsible for regulating the game to be even more attentive to the way in which standards of behaviour by players on and off the field have a big impact upon young people, in particular, who are so influenced by role models. Those who have watched the game over the years have seen the gradual emergence of the "professional foul" or the feigned injury and attempts by forwards illicitly to win a penalty kick. These things are recognised, and attempts have been made to curb them. The yellow and red card system has reduced some of the worst foul play, but there is still far too much.
	Perhaps I may comment that the England captain's action earlier in the year in deliberately fouling an opponent in order to get booked so that he could serve his suspension when he knew that he would be off injured seemed to me to be taken too lightly by the football authorities.
	The difference in penalty between a yellow card and a red card seems to me to be too stark a discipline for referees to exercise. Is there not a case in football for 10 or 15 minutes in a "sin bin" as an additional option for referees? That might be a useful alternative to the nuclear option of a red card.
	Young players at the top clubs today are given huge amounts of money and the trappings of a celebrity lifestyle. Is enough done to help them to understand the responsibilities which should go with such rewards? I think there is a particular onus here on the clubs to do more, but perhaps in conjunction with the football authorities and the players' union.
	Finally, I say a word about referees. They generally do a pretty good job by my judgment, but they currently have a near impossible task. I have already referred to the rather meagre and uneven range of sanctions which are available to them on the pitch. We have seen how modern technology has begun to assist referees and umpires with marginal decisions in cricket and rugby. Given all that hangs upon critical incidents in football games involving the referee, is there no place for providing referees with some technical help with a limited number of critical incidents during a professional game? No doubt careful thought has already been given to that but, at present, too many games turn on controversial decisions by the referee. That does the game no good at all. Perhaps each team could be allowed a limited number of appeals per game against decisions to award a penalty or to allow a goal.
	Let me draw to a conclusion. The late Cardinal Hume was an ardent supporter of Newcastle United, a club that my daughter, who was born in the north-east, supports with equal fervour. Indeed, on arrival at Newcastle University last September, her first port of call was the supporters club, where she obtained a part-time job that she still has. When Newcastle was in the FA Cup Final some years ago, Cardinal Hume was asked whether he had any advice for the team. "Yes", said the cardinal, "to win". Winning is important, not least for West Brom at present, but it is not everything, and the manner of the broader conduct of the game is vital to its continued success.

Lord Pendry: My Lords, I must begin by congratulating my noble friend Lord Faulkner of Worcester on securing the debate. I fully recognise why he sought to initiate it, as he has been responsible for spearheading many of the changes for good in our national game in the past, in his capacity as deputy chairman of the Football Trust. At the same time, I understand his frustration at the lack of progress made by football authorities, despite his efforts.
	For my part, I must declare my interest before embarking on my remarks; namely, that I am the current president and former chairman of the Football Foundation, which is, as noble Lords will know, a partnership between government, the Football Association and the Premier League that funds a transformation of the grassroots game and which, in the past four years, has established itself as the largest sports charity. As the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport said recently:
	"Football is our National game. It reaches out to the most disadvantaged. The Football Foundation has provided new and better facilities for kids up and down the country. I am delighted to announce that what started as an experiment is about to become part of the fabric of local sport".
	I recognise the issue highlighted by my noble friend Lord Faulkner: financial problems face even some of the top Premier League clubs but, even more so, some of the clubs in the lower leagues, as I am only too aware from supporting Derby County in the Championship and Stalybridge Celtic in the Nationwide North. Legitimate concerns have already been expressed about the leadership of the game and the direction of football's governance in the future. We must ensure that sound corporate governance and sustainable financial decision making are to the fore.
	There is a real sense that the game is at times lurching from one crisis to another, whether as a result of the indiscipline of players; the impact of agents; or, indeed, the action of those who should know better in the boardrooms of clubs and governing bodies. Those issues are important, and we must continue to work with those in charge of the game to ensure that they are addressed appropriately.
	However, the picture is not all doom and gloom. As my noble friend Lord Faulkner has already made clear in his balanced approach to the problems facing football, steps have already been taken by the Premier League and the Football League to generate higher standards of governance by member clubs. The introduction of fit and proper person tests, enhanced directors' reports and a directors' declaration of shareholdings are all to be commended and enhance the standards of accountability to new levels above and beyond what is required by UK company law.
	Annual directors' reports also oblige clubs to set out to the appropriate football authorities a statement of their transactions, including payments to agents or third parties, as well as at the end of each accounting period. Those measures are further backed up by an independent auditor's report and add a new dimension of transparency to the game. Although we must always hold those running football to account when we believe that they are falling short of their responsibilities, we also have a duty to praise and publicise actions that demonstrate football's ongoing commitment to sound corporate governance and sustainable financial decision making.
	Those are important steps along the way of improving the state of football. Of course, they are not enough in themselves. Indeed, the issues that have been raised during this debate deserve more than two and a half hours of consideration. Perhaps that will happen following the lead set by my noble friend Lord Faulkner today.
	In addition to board-level developments, things are also going right in our national game at grassroots level. It will not surprise the House if I refer in particular to the Football Foundation. The Premier League, the FA and the Government have delivered the biggest funding package in the history of sport, which, in turn, has led to the largest redistribution of wealth to the grassroots of the game. In such a short time, the foundation and its non-charitable arm, the Football Stadia Improvement Fund, have already provided funding in excess of £200 million for 1,800 projects. That, in turn, has attracted additional inward investment into the sport of more than £225 million.
	Success indeed breeds success. Barclays Bank plc recently announced its intention to inject a huge £30 million into a three-year partnership with the foundation and Groundwork called "Barclays Spaces for Sports", which will regenerate urban sporting areas. That is the single biggest investment ever in grassroots sport by a British company.
	The foundation believes that everyone should have access to modern sporting facilities in the immediate area, not necessarily with a view to becoming an elite sportsman or woman, but simply to gain the benefit that sport can offer. The FA informs me that more than 7 million adults and 5 million children regularly play football. In the past three years, there has been a 31 per cent rise in mini-soccer for under-10s; a 27 per cent rise in youth soccer; and, as I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Addington, will be pleased to know, a 53 per cent increase in the number of women playing the game.
	In the light of that trend, I, like my noble friend Lord Faulkner, welcome Brian Barwick to his new position as chief executive of the FA. I call on him to secure the faith of those who passionately believe in the importance of our national game and to build on the capacity of the FA to run football as it should be run, with stability and integrity.
	So, for all its many faults—there are many—in my view, the national game is improving, slowly but positively, and all of us who care about the game must give recognition and support to the areas in which football is working well.

Baroness Morris of Bolton: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, for facilitating this debate and for his excellent speech. When I arrived in your Lordships' House today, I suddenly realised that, as a Bolton Wanderers fan about to speak in a debate on football, I might have chosen a better colour of scarf to wear. To say that football has played a significant part in my life would be an understatement. I went to my first Bolton Wanderers match in my mother's womb. Not only was I born into a football-mad family, I married into one. My husband and I were married on Friday 20 October, 1978, so that we could watch Bolton play Manchester City on Saturday 21. It was a draw.
	I hear that there are other supporters of Bolton Wanderers in your Lordships' House. The noble Lord, Lord Roper, who is not in his place, tells me that his grandchildren in Edinburgh go to sleep in Bolton Wanderers pyjamas.
	Unlike most of your Lordships who are speaking in today's debate, I do not profess to be an expert on the game, although I do understand the offside rule. I am a passionate supporter and it is as a fan that I speak today. I simply want to make a couple of observations about accessibility and the funding of grassroots football.
	In the 1970s and 1980s, professional football was in crisis. Crowds were falling, and there was serious violence both outside and inside grounds. Since then, although the game faces new challenges—not least the concentration of vast sums of money in the hands of the top Premiership clubs, their players and agents—crowds are increasing, television audiences of the game are enormous and, as the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, mentioned, violence has been all but eliminated from the grounds and is not as great a problem as it once was outside, given the all-seeing eye of the CCTV camera. There is as much fascination with football today as there has been throughout the past century. Yet, I fear that the game is becoming inaccessible to its core supporters and the young. No longer is there cheap terracing, and ticket prices are high. I understand why, following the disasters that scarred the national game, a decision was taken to make stadiums all-seater, but it has also taken away some of the character.
	Only once did I watch a game from the terraces of Burnden Park; it was a Rugby League match. Oldham was playing Wigan in the Stone's Bitter Challenge semi-final; they had to play at a neutral ground. I arrived early with my six year-old son, and we had a good vantage point. After a while, we were surrounded by rather large men. My son kept asking them politely if they were supporting Oldham, only to be told, politely, that they were supporting Wigan. As the crowds grew, one of the Wigan supporters asked my son if he would like to sit on his shoulders; we gratefully accepted. Just as the match was about to start there was a lull; into the silence my son chirped up, "We're here because my mummy is the Conservative candidate for Oldham". I was just wondering how I could get my son down and escape intact, when the man whose shoulders he was sitting on said, "Well, lad, she's got about as much chance as her rugby team". As the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, knows, he was quite right.
	I tell that story because it was fun to stand, and it was much warmer on a very cold day. But I also tell it because it has long puzzled me why crowds at rugby matches mingle easily, yet crowds at football matches must be so heavily segregated. Has it anything to do with the fact that we get the behaviour we deserve because of the way in which we treat people? I pose that question not least because when my son was in San Francisco he went to a baseball match where everyone sat together, tickets were cheap and the game was accessible. Now that players have such huge wages and agents take so much money, are the top football clubs in danger of killing the goose that lays the golden egg?
	Football has a powerful hold over the imagination of so many young—and not so young—people. For many of us, it provides an excitement and an escape from the day to day. But it is not just top-flight football. When I realised that my noble friend Lord Lyell was an Everton supporter, I was not sure whether I should call him "my noble friend". As he said, for many, football is played in the park, at school, five-a-side in the gym, or just knocking a ball about in the street. It is a great way of getting kids and young people active. We should capitalise on that and do all that we can to encourage the game.
	Many top clubs do wonderful work in the community. Charles Hendry, the shadow Minister for Young People, who has visited many of those projects, tells heart-warming stories of clubs involved in schools, working with the disabled and taking part in academic studies. I agree with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester: I would like to see more such activity, although what is done is very welcome.
	Many sports clubs and youth clubs are also making an impact. Until recently, I was a director of Bolton Lads and Girls Club, one of the biggest youth clubs in the country, if not the biggest. It is a true success story. The football section of the club is flourishing, with 19 football teams and many children on the waiting list. One of the biggest problems is the lack of pitches. We need to do all that we can to protect our playing fields and ensure that more are brought into use by the community.
	The late, great Bill Shankly used to say to his strikers, "If you find yourself in the box with the ball at your feet, just stick it in the back of the net, and we'll discuss your options later". Whatever options football and the Government take, let us never forget that football is a game, and as such it should be fun, enjoyable and accessible for all.

Lord Newby: My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, on initiating the debate. In recent years, my personal experience of the game has been almost entirely positive. I have two teenage sons for whom football is their major way of getting exercise and one of the best ways of making friends at school. Their experience of it has been entirely beneficial. As a spectator in recent years at Premier League matches and a viewer of live football and highlights on television, I have found football one of the most satisfactory forms of relaxation. However, watching Leeds United lose 6-1 to Portsmouth in the Premier League last year was a blip on that otherwise relatively satisfactory pastime.
	In response to the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton, about standing, as a youth standing at the kop end at Elland Road, I can assure her that it was cold, uncovered and unpleasant. One was subject to a range of missiles from the "away" supporters who stood behind the youth section. I therefore support seating at football grounds. On Sunday, when I went to the Arsenal match and sat at the north bank, there was no lack of passion there, despite the fact that people were sitting down, for at least part of the game.
	As everybody has acknowledged, football is more important than any other sport. Why? More people play it; more people watch it; more people care about it; and, in many communities, the football club is the most significant institution and a major local employer. That is why it has such potential to influence people's lives and to be a power for good, or for harm. That is why it is the subject of so much scrutiny.
	As noble Lords have said, the game has changed very much in the past decade. There have been steadily rising crowds across the divisions; huge investment in stadiums; increased professionalism in the management of clubs and the game itself, and a huge increase in the revenue of the top clubs, through television, merchandise and the development of the game and clubs as global brands, which was unimaginable 20 or 30 years ago. We have seen an explosion in the number of women and girls playing football and the development of supporters' trusts.
	Much attention has been focused on, and many concerns expressed about, the governance of the professional game. But as several noble Lords have pointed out, those issues are being addressed systematically and professionally by both the Premier League and the Football League. The Premier League's new governance rules, published in August, deal very satisfactorily with issues such as directors' qualifications and the need for more transparent financial reporting than ever before. Manchester United's latest annual report is a model of transparency in every aspect of the game. Admittedly, pressures were brought to bear on the club to lead to such a situation. However, compared to what one knew previously about the players, how much they were bought for and how much agents were paid, the club's report marks a new, positive standard.
	There remains a raft of issues concerning many fans that are as yet unresolved or unsatisfactorily resolved. Those include the wealth of the Premier League compared to lower divisions; wages at the top clubs; and the role and regulation of agents. Why, for example, was an agent paid £750,000 to facilitate Alan Smith's transfer to Manchester United, when I am sure that he would have gone on his hands and knees across the Pennines with little help from anybody? I believe strongly that those matters should be left for football to resolve. The role of the Independent Football Commission is undoubtedly to prod and goad people, as a result of which it will never be very popular; that is not its role. Personally, I am very dubious about the need or desirability of statutory regulation of football. It is for a combination of the Premier League, the Football League and the FA to sort out.
	As I have said, the Premier League and the Football League have made great progress recently. The FA is changing and doing a tremendous amount of good work in providing a framework for grass-roots football through, for example, its coaching and refereeing training. It is also increasingly doing a great deal of work internationally to promote good practice in all aspects of the game—not least in the world's poorest countries.
	The recent problems of the FA have been exemplified by the soap opera of its senior management. I hope that the appointment of Brian Barwick will bring some stability and leadership. He should be left to get on with it. The Government, who have been barely mentioned today, should concentrate, as they have belatedly, on providing more resources to get more children playing football and other sports at school.
	My particular interest in football, other than as a fan, has been how to use the power of football among young people to inspire them to improve their lives and their communities. I declare an interest as chairman of the Prince's Trust football initiative and as an adviser to the Karrot project. The Prince's Trust began its relationship with football in 1997 with seven of the Premier League clubs. It is now working with more than 50 professional clubs in England.
	The trust works with "hard to reach" young people, particularly those who are unemployed, under-skilled, ex-offenders or are at risk of offending and care leavers. In recent research among that group of people, about 75 per cent of males and more than 40 per cent of females said that they supported a football club.
	The work of the trust is to get people's lives working again. It has been using football's unique position in local communities and its general magnetism to do just that. It does that through its "Team" programme, which is for 16 to 25 year-olds. All of the young people are unemployed. It is a 12-week personal development course, which develops confidence, motivation and team-work skills and the young people gain QCA Key Skills Unit and City and Guilds Profile of Achievement awards at the end.
	The clubs provide a mixture of team-building activities, team rooms at stadiums, motivational talks, work placements, use of learning centres at the stadiums for CV and letter-writing workshops, stadium tours, involvement with the players, and venues and hospitality for team presentations.
	To date, some 8,000 young people have been through that programme, of which about two-thirds were male, more than 20 per cent were ex-offenders, nearly 20 per cent were from minority ethnic backgrounds and more than 10 per cent were in or leaving care. As regards the outcomes, more than half of those young people who were unemployed from these difficult to reach groups got a job. Another 30 per cent went on to further education or a training course. More than 80 per cent had a positive outcome, which is a higher proportion than equivalent young people working through equivalent courses that are not linked to football.
	The funding has come in no small measure from the world of football—£750,000 a year from a combination of the Premier League, the Football Foundation and the Professional Footballers' Association. The programme, which is now in its eighth year, is to be developed further to ensure that even more of those young people use it to get jobs, which we hope are very often linked to the sport and leisure services industry.
	I now turn briefly to the other project with which I have worked. The Karrot project in Southwark, which was initiated by the police as a diversion programme, has worked with branded providers of sport and art activities, of which Millwall Football Club has been one. Interestingly, of all the activity providers, Millwall has been deemed to be the most efficient and effective. In a recent evaluation, the only criticism was that there was not more of it.
	I know those two examples extremely well, but they are only a very small proportion of what football is doing in the community. The noble Lord, Lord Pendry, referred to the Football Foundation, which has spent, as he said, more than £200 million on that kind of activity and grass-roots activity, which is a huge sum in a relatively small number of years. Learning centres, the use of players and the development of healthy living courses are now being increasingly rolled out by football clubs. I believe that there is much more to do.
	In conclusion, football is in a very vigorous state. There are remaining challenges, but it makes a positive contribution to the lives of millions of people in England who play, watch or get involved in the social programmes that are linked to football.

Lord Clark of Windermere: My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Faulkner on his initiative in calling for this debate. He has had a long track record in furthering the interests of football. He is very knowledgeable about it, as we have heard today. The debate is also appropriate and timely. As we have heard, we are beginning to see moves by the various football authorities. It is two and a half years since we have had a debate on football in this House. At present, a nudge from Members of this House might be helpful.
	Before I continue, I should declare my interests. I am a non-executive director of Carlisle United Football Club. I am a member of the Carlisle United Supporters' Trust and I am a small shareholder. I should like to share with noble Lords some of my experiences as a director of a professional football club in order to highlight some of the problems.
	In the four years since I became involved at the top level of administration at a football club, I admit that I have seen all the panoply of human emotions. I have seen comedy, drama, farce, sadness and ecstasy: we all know that that is just what football is about. Indeed, I am rather flattered that the right reverend Prelate and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton, referred to that famous manager of Carlisle United, Bill Shankly. That is where he learnt his art. I agree 100 per cent with what they said.
	As the noble Lord, Lord Lyell, said, football is about dreams; dreams are sometimes attained, but sometimes they are shattered. I recall that it was only 30 years ago that Carlisle was at the top of the First Division. How the mighty have fallen, as we struggle in the Conference. But there is life after the league, which is enjoyable.
	I should also like to say a few words about directors, most of whom in the lower leagues get nothing financially out of the game. They just put money in week after week. I also think that many of the problems of football will be solved and are being solved from the bottom. We cannot wait for the Premiership to react.
	We hear a great deal of talk about high wages. I can share with noble Lords that in the lower leagues, the norm, the weekly wage for a player, is probably between £400 and £700 a week. That has been forced on them rightly by the authorities, whose initiative of linking wages to turnover we have to follow and pursue at the highest level if we are to avoid some of the difficulties that we see football in today.
	My involvement in Carlisle has been colourful: I was asked to sell the club by our previous owner but one, Michael Knighton. Noble Lords may recall him as the ball-juggling director of Manchester United. I sold the club to a multi-millionaire, lovable Irish businessman, John Courtney, who pumped millions of pounds into our club and saved it. In turn, only this year, he has sold the club to a local businessman from the city of Carlisle who wanted to own the club for the simple reason that he knew Carlisle was a football town and he felt that his own city wanted a sustainable football club. We have tried to run it in a businesslike, sustainable manner. I believe that is the future at every level of professional football.
	Perhaps I may raise one or two points from my experience which the Minister may want to take upon himself. First, one of the best things the football authorities have done at the conference level and at the lower league level is bring in a rule that if a club goes into administration, it is deducted 10 points. Too many football clubs have been irresponsible by going straight into administration because they were not prepared to face up to the consequences of their business decisions. It is outrageous that some clubs have gone into administration twice. That cannot be justified. I pay credit to Leeds, which did not take that option. The players were sold and it went out of the Premiership by following that route. This is something we need to think about very carefully.
	Carlisle was put into administration by Michael Knighton. It was a painful experience, although I admit that a number of practical issues came out of that period, some of which were quite sinister. I was quite staggered at the cost of administration for Carlisle, a small club. I shall share it with the House: it cost us £480,000. We found that very difficult to justify and it would be helpful if the Government could make a comparative study, as some have thought to do, of the cost of administration to football clubs.
	I know the cost varies from club to club because every case is different, but the case of Carlisle was not difficult because we repaid every single penny of our debts. I think that Carlisle is the only football club that has gone into administration and paid back 100 pence in the pound. We are proud of that because the people we owed money to were often small businessmen, St John Ambulance, the health authority and the police. In other words, it was right and proper that the club should pay up.
	But I have got to say that the Government are not absolved from responsibility in this. In the case of smaller football clubs, often the biggest creditors are government departments—the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise. One must question why, when Carlisle repaid 100 per cent and York paid nearly 70 per cent, both teams went out of the league as a result—the clubs were left with huge debts—while other teams, such as Darlington, paying less than a penny in the pound, and Leicester City 10 pence in the pound—I will not even look at Bradford who have been there twice—remain in the league. That cannot be right and the Inland Revenue, although it may have conned various people and tried to con the Public Accounts Committee in the other place, have a point to answer.
	The other issue I want to raise is this: in the course of our administration, we discovered that at one stage, a company called Haines Watt of South Yorkshire offered to lend us money to get out of administration and carry on training. That was done through a company called Stirling Consortium. What concerned us was that some of the individuals running Haines Watt, the insolvency experts, were also directors of Stirling Consortium. I thought that that was ambulance chasing of the worst kind. We refused to take the money, but other clubs such as Chesterfield, I believe, and Darlington have done so. Moreover, Stirling Consortium charges a rate of return to football clubs in the region of 16 or 17 per cent. There seems to be a conflict of interest when the administrators looking after a club's financial interest are associated with another company providing finance. There should be some form of investigation into that matter.
	I shall make one last plea. Will the Government ask the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise to treat football clubs like any other business? In any other business, if by the end of the month you have not paid your PAYE and VAT, you get a reminder, a visit and a threat. That does not apply to football clubs. As a result, many clubs run up huge debts with the Inland Revenue. The latest story is that Wrexham is reputed to owe the Revenue and Customs some £900,000, which is a vast amount of money. If it were dealt with on a monthly basis, as it is in other companies, we would find that the sums were much more manageable. If football is to be run in a businesslike fashion, the Government must treat the clubs like businesses.

Lord Rosser: My Lords, I add my congratulations to those already expressed to my noble friend Lord Faulkner on securing this timely debate. My noble friend Lord Pendry has confirmed that the football authorities believe that over 7 million adults and 5 million children play football regularly, with an increase of over 50 per cent in the number of women and girls playing the game over the past three years. Football is the number one participation sport for men, and I understand that by last year it was for women as well. In addition, it is estimated that some half a million volunteers contribute their spare time in enthusiastic support of the game every week.
	Money is being invested in football, including at the grass roots level. My noble friend Lord Pendry pointed out that over the past four years or so, the Football Foundation and its non-charitable arm, the Football Stadia Improvement Fund, have provided funding of more than £200 million for not far short of 200,000 projects, for which the football authorities and the Government can take some credit.
	Yet, as has been said, there are issues relating to the game of football which are causes for concern or potential concern. The largest and most powerful clubs in the 20-strong Premier League appear to be looking for more control and influence over the running of the game and over the allocation of finance. However, they do not appear to be seeking it for the benefit of the game as a whole. There is a tension between the Premier League, which is represented on the Football Association governing council and the Football Association itself, which has a responsibility for the game at all levels, not least at the lower and grass roots levels, where active participation is at its greatest.
	One example of that tension surfaced two or three weeks ago, when the chairman of one of the strongest Premier League clubs, Newcastle United, was reported as having said during a football seminar in Dubai that Premier League clubs were not interested in the position of clubs in the lower divisions since the money and power lay in the Premiership. That individual also forecast that the Premier League would take over the running of English soccer and can only have meant from the Football Association, which has that overall responsibility at the moment, as well as for the FA Cup and internationals.
	A year ago the then chief executive of Manchester United, now with Chelsea, was reported as saying that it would not be long before there were only 40 full-time clubs in the country, compared with just over 100 today if one includes the Nationwide Conference clubs which are full-time. The future for grass roots and lower league football would not appear to be in safe hands, if the powerful Premier League clubs get their way, since their attitude and approach seems to be driven by the revenue needs of their own clubs and plcs, not the overall interests of the game and the millions who directly participate in it.
	Football at the highest level has become very commercialised, as the millions of extra pounds from the televising of matches has poured in, and with it the increased amounts that can be secured from sponsorship as well. Interestingly, I wrote to a Premiership club this season for a match programme, to be told that I would have to phone an outside company. When I did so, I found myself talking to a call centre in India.
	Rich benefactors and owners have been attracted in greater numbers to football. Their motive or driving force is not always clear, but owning a football club certainly raises an individual's media profile in today's age of regular televised football and European and intercontinental competition in a way that owning a business does not. Even owning a small club raises an individual's profile in the local and regional media.
	The difficulty is that the football club then becomes dependent on the continuing financial support of one or two individuals, which is fine while it lasts. However, if that support is withdrawn, major financial problems can result, particularly so if the club has run up significant debts as a result of over-ambitious forays into the transfer market to secure new players and over-inflated salaries to attract and retain players. As has already been said, Leeds United is an example of what happens when financial judgment goes out of the window.
	There is also an issue of whether the game at the highest level is not allowing itself to be dictated to too much by television and the millions of pounds that it has to offer. The effect of television money, in particular on those clubs which are successful in European competitions, where the financial rewards from television and sponsorship are much higher, has been to exacerbate the divide between the top four or five Premier League clubs and the rest of the Premier League. That has entrenched the position of the top clubs, as they have the greatest financial clout. It means that, in effect, only one of those top four or five clubs—some would say only three—has any realistic prospect of winning our domestic Premier League. Frankly, if you make the outcome of the competition all too predictable by, in reality, excluding nearly all the competitors year after year from winning, it must have an adverse impact on attendances and income, including from television itself and from sponsorship.
	There are many who ask what has happened to all the additional money that has come into the game from television, sponsorship and some of the wealthy new owners. Five per cent of television revenue goes to the Football Foundation. There must be a case, surely, for that figure to be higher. Not a great deal seems to have gone on the development and expansion of the game at all levels compared to the amounts that have been swallowed by those at the very top.
	Transfer fees for players at the highest level have certainly risen, as have salaries for players, managers, senior administrators and directors. Admission charges have risen significantly. We have also seen how football agents have creamed off significant sums of money— running into millions of pounds—when top players move from one club to another or renegotiate their contract and they, the agents, demand their cut from the deal.
	Some top players now retire from playing for the national team but continue to play for their clubs which pay them and to which they are under contract. A key reason appears to be the heavy playing commitments on players with top clubs, including regular European matches and, possibly, club tours to different parts of the world during the close season in the summer. One way of reducing the commitment to play, and probably extending the length of the playing career of the individual footballer, is to decline non-club commitments—namely, international football.
	Bearing in mind the real enthusiasm, the passion, the pride and the support in the country for the England football team during the World Cup and European Cup competitions, one really does wonder what the football authorities and the clubs are up to when some of our best players feel that they have no option but to withdraw from playing for their country. It cannot be in the long-term interests of English football either that relatively few players in the Premier League are British, let alone English. It is hardly an encouragement to young aspiring English footballers.
	There are other issues. Matters of governance, the suitability of individuals to run and control a football club, the encouragement of more involvement in the running or ownership of clubs by supporters and the sound and realistic financial management of football clubs need to be addressed. Some steps have been taken in that direction by the Football Association, the Football League and other football authorities. There is also a need to ensure that the interests of supporters who attend matches are looked after. Many are less than happy at the considerably increased charges they now have to pay for admission and for club merchandise, as well as being unimpressed at how kick-off times of matches are changed to suit the demands of television at the expense of what is convenient to supporters, particularly travelling supporters. The game as a spectacle at the higher levels is heavily dependent on the atmosphere at matches created by the passion and enthusiasm of its supporters.
	My noble friend Lord Faulkner suggested that statutory regulation could be necessary very much as a last resort. Certainly the football authorities collectively have got to show that they can work together in the interests of the game as a whole and its millions of active participants, volunteers and supporters, rather than having a situation where some seem to give greater priority to pursuing sectional interests. If the football authorities prove unable to do this—there are many able and dedicated people in those authorities—then government may have to consider doing rather more than offering them encouragement.

Lord Grantchester: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Faulkner for securing this debate today. I pay tribute to him for keeping sport and our national game firmly within our attention, recognising that it has significance to millions in their lives, whether as players, supporters, armchair critics, family or community participants.
	I declare an interest as a past director of Everton Football Club.

Lord Lyell: Hear, hear!

Lord Grantchester: My Lords, I am glad to see that we have a supporter present.
	I am the present chairman of Liverpool County FA Local Football Partnership and a trustee of the Foundation for Sports and the Arts.
	I wish to make some comments as a backcloth to our debate today. The first and obvious area is financial. The accountants, Deloittes, produce an excellent report each year which has highlighted how financial returns and wealth are becoming more and more concentrated in the hands of the élite. The gap is widening between the top clubs and the lower leagues.
	Even within the Premiership, the returns going to the top three or four clubs have produced a major distortion of competition. The pyramid system of promotion and relegation, even within the top élite of the Premiership, cannot work effectively with such financial hurdles whereby an ambitious club—and one could have classed Leeds United in this category—can hardly manage the risk.
	There are those who have sought an alternative business model—community ownership—and have engaged in discussions with Treasury Ministers. I await the result of their deliberations with interest. However, a simple solution is available within football and I call upon the Premier League, and the majority of clubs that are excluded from the top riches and yet can effect change, to restructure the merit payments to produce a more equitable distribution. Competition not finance should be the spur to improvement. After all, the top clubs must have an opposition.
	A strange contradiction has been produced. Never has there been such money going into the game and yet all but the few top clubs plead poverty. It is, of course, the players who have achieved predominance and managed to take most of the spoils. While there may be no real quarrel with this, nevertheless it denies the fact that football is a team game.
	The individual relies on his club for the team. The players naturally contract their services to the highest bidder—that is, the clubs. I should like to propose to the clubs and the footballers' union, the Professional Footballers' Association, that they take a look at how a player's returns can give recognition back to the club in its pursuit of building a successful team. I suggest that a percentage of the personal endorsements that a player receives over and above his contract with his club is returned to the club.
	The hunger for success has pushed many clubs to seek finance from the market and yet the modern idiom of shareholder value is inappropriate to running a football club. It has been an unhappy experience for the City institutions seeking a return for their investments. The dividends of soccer are points, trophies and yet more expensive players. Success and returns accrue to the community. It is, after all, business and the community that support the club through sponsorship; the owners are merely custodians.
	I make this comment in the light of discussions on Merseyside between the two Premiership clubs—Liverpool and Everton—the city council, the North West Development Agency and the public purse. Both clubs wish to build new stadiums; both clubs need to maximise their resources to the playing staff—and yet both clubs seem to be approaching this in terms that they can do only what is in the best interests of their shareholders. Last week both sides met with the Minister for Sport, my right honourable friend Richard Caborn.
	What is needed is a greater vision for the community of Merseyside, which will be celebrating as the European City of Culture in 2008. If public funds are to be made available, this should only be on the basis of a shared stadium, seeking maximum value for money and minimising infrastructure disbenefits.
	As an aside—I use my colours in a sporting complexion—Peter Johnson made a curious remark to me on joining Everton's board. He said, "I didn't know I had a red in the boardroom".
	As to the blue side of Merseyside, the noble Lord, Lord Lyell, is correct to pay tribute to Everton's community programme. Everton is the people's club. It has received "Community Mark" recognition from Business in the Community, especially in relation to its disabled development programme whereby eight different impairment group teams—such as amputee, deaf, partially sighted and five pan-disabilities—now field teams, and nearly 10,000 children and adults with disabilities participate in football.
	I add my comments to those of my noble friend Lord Pendry in paying tribute to the Football Foundation on its work in supporting grass roots football. On Merseyside the Local Football Partnership is mandated with channelling this to football development, in partnership with the local authorities and other stakeholders.
	Liverpool's LFP has identified key strategic objectives—namely, to reverse the decline in adult league football; to redevelop employer-sponsored and private sports grounds; to develop, in a strategic programme, outdoor pitches and facilities and the devolution of responsibility to clubs; to promote community use of school facilities; to promote the women's game; and to use football as a tool for social inclusion. Now in its third year, this strategy has delivered over £3 million towards club and community football and its facilities, with the objective of extending a further £20 million locally by 2007. My noble friend Lord Pendry is correct when he describes the work of the FA in this area.
	I would also like to echo the concerns of my noble friend Lord Faulkner regarding corporate governance of the game. I have already commented on the lack of responsible patronage of those who have custodianship of our clubs. It is vital that the FA gets to grips with these issues and follows up the good work undertaken by Mark Palios, the recent departed FA chief executive. I echo the good wishes of my noble friend Lord Faulkner towards his successor.
	The FA needs to recognise the development of gambling and, indeed, your Lordships will soon be grappling with the Gambling Bill. This is by no means a new feature, as the name of the footballer, Tony Kay, will remind some noble Lords. There were legitimate concerns expressed at the level of betting on the score line of 5:2 in a recent UEFA game. Everyone concerned with the game must recognise the serious issues that will arise when football clubs attract casinos to their stadiums. Continuation of income streams means that we have the wherewithal to seize the opportunities to improve football and its image to the delight of millions.

Lord Jones: My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lord Faulkner of Worcester for initiating this debate. It has been suffused with enthusiasm and insight. On Friday last, I heard on Radio 4's "Desert Island Discs" the voice of Tyneside's soccer icon, Sir Bobby Robson. He described how, on the Newcastle team coach after a Premiership match, one of his players exclaimed, "Boss, turn the bus around. I've left my diamond ear stud in the dressing room". Sir Bobby then reflected to his host, the cool Ms Lawley, that the young professionals of the premiership were paid too much. They did not know what to do with their riches. He implied that it was not good for the sport. It is the case that the superb English player, Mr Sol Campbell, is negotiating a new contract. It is speculated that the upper limit might be £100,000 per week, or more.
	There is a moral aspect here for British society. Will it be good for the sport for the financial gap between the Premiership and the rest to continue apace? Do we undervalue the wonderful work of those who locally coach those boys and girls of school age, or those who scout, teach and encourage? How shall we further these good developments? Our health Ministers are panic-stricken at the advance of obesity among the school population. Can soccer be both the medicine and the antidote? Instead of building massive leisure complexes that are expensive to run and expensive to enter, why not string plentiful, all-weather, floodlit, five-a-side pitches through the ubiquitous social housing estates? Why cannot local youth soccer coaches be honoured? They do excellent work for young people in our communities. They are unsung, little thanked and responsible adults who help countless youngsters to achieve their potential and to gain confidence and good health.
	Wrexham AFC languishes near the foot of its league. The town is outraged at its soccer team's perilous future. Long-time supporters want a certain future for their team at the Racecourse ground. Currently, sadly, it is a question of planning, debts, commerce, consortia, bidders, businessmen and administrators, and 10 points down the drain. It is the talk of Wrexham. The whole town is hurting. This is not a problem unique to Wrexham in north-east Wales, where I live. It is a phenomenon known across Britain in today's unstable football world. The contrasts are massive, from the glamorous soccer palace stadiums of the premiership to the precarious futures of financially wrecked lower league clubs.
	I believe that somewhere in this there is a moral aspect for football. Principled leadership is required, and wise decisions are need from the powers that be. In all of this, I praise my own club, Connahs Quay Nomads, of which I am patron. We of the Welsh Premier League had a great day when Sir Alex Ferguson brought one of his young teams to play our first XI. The club has an agreement with Manchester United and I found that Sir Alex was a magnet for the many youngsters at the match. From the touchline to Sir Alex's seat in our tiny grandstand, those young boys and girls queued for his autograph. Patient and agreeable, he signed throughout the entire match. Nothing was too much trouble for one of the all-time greats of soccer management and leadership. This was not the image that is so unjustly served up in our tabloid media. This was a soccer ambassador from the heights of the Premiership and the theatre of dreams.
	As a one-time season ticket holder for Everton, I saw the great half-back line of Harvey, Kendall and Ball in their blue shirts. It is the case that, in north Wales, on most Saturdays, motor coaches transport Welsh men and women to Premiership matches at Goodison Park, Anfield and Old Trafford, such is the allure of those great clubs and such is the cultural and economic link between north Wales and Merseyside. Is there anything nicer than going to a soccer match with one's son? But at about £35 a seat at the Premiership, it is not an option for everybody. It is getting harder and harder.
	The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester has instanced his loyalty to West Bromwich Albion and he can also be justifiably proud of Chester Football Club, if he wishes. One recollects the famed derby matches of Chester and Wrexham in the old League Division North. At the Racecourse in Wrexham, in 1968, I think, I saw the Reds grind out a grim 1:1 draw with the Cestrians. My point is that there were 11,000 people present at that derby match. Oh, that both clubs might gain such mass support again! What is the financial and footballing fate of our lower leagues? Which footballing organisation is taking the lead to devise a survival plan?
	When World War II ended, millions of men of the King's army returned home in 1946 and 1947. They were fit and confident men, and many of them joined village soccer teams. They had not always been at the battlefront. They were fit and at their physical peak. My recollection of the late 1940s is of every village fielding teams led by talented ex-servicemen. I remember that competition was very considerable. The field of play was often roughly reclaimed from wartime emergency agricultural production and was often of a daunting gradient. Those teams live on in the pub teams all over Britain that hack it hopefully on Sundays. They are the lifeblood of Britain's principal sport.
	Soccer is the people's passion. It has been part of our nation's social history and part of the warp and woof of British society. At its best, the game's nobility and stirring engagement is inspiring, but we need to act very quickly to save the game from possible disaster.

Lord McNally: My Lords, when the noble Lord, Lord Clarke, was talking about the role of the Inland Revenue, I was reminded that, as the Member of Parliament for Stockport South, I once had reason to call on the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury, John MacGregor—now the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor—to ask him for leniency because Stockport County Football Club had not paid its taxes for some years. After I made an impassioned plea, laying out the social and emotional commitment that Stockport County made to the whole of Stockport, John MacGregor said, "That's all very well, Tom, but the Inland Revenue cannot act as a lender of last resort to Stockport County Football Club". One of the themes of the debate today, first made by my noble friend Lord Addington, is that there must be strong pressure on the professional game to run itself professionally.
	I would not be so ungallant as to say that the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, must remember one of the greatest football games of all time, namely Blackpool 4, Bolton Wanderers 3. After all, it was 51 years ago. But if she would like to see it, I have a video of the game and would be very happy for us to spend a pleasant 90 minutes—the last 20 minutes are particularly good as Blackpool scored three goals—in the Television Room.
	Another theme this evening is our lifelong commitment to our football club. My 11 year-old son says that Daddy is always in a better mood on a Saturday night when Blackpool has won. As noble Lords can imagine, there have been some grumpy evenings in the McNally household.
	I am looking forward to hearing the reply of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, under whose captaincy I had the honour to play in the Lords and Commons team some 20 years ago. However, my first and real thanks go to the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner. The noble Lord, Lord Pendry, got it absolutely right: over a very long period, the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, has been the champion of changes for good in soccer, and we are all in his debt, not only for securing this debate but for the campaigns he has carried out on soccer's behalf.
	It is because soccer needs not just fans but candid friends that this debate has been so useful. We all give our very best wishes to the new FA chief executive, Brian Barwick. He has taken on the job at a very difficult time and must already feel as though he has joined one of the country's more controversial soap operas. We all know what a high risk strategy it is to become involved in soap operas—I am sure my noble friend Lord Newby knows. That is a Lib Dem in-joke, but never mind. All will be revealed on Christmas Day.
	The FA has the difficult—some would say impossible—task of representing both the major élite clubs and the grass roots of the game. It has to convince the big clubs, as some have said, that what is happening is good for the shareholder value of each club—I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, that that is an almost impossible task—as well as carrying out its grass-roots role.
	It is often said that soccer chairmen are self-made men who worship their creators. It can be difficult to run a football club. It may have a ground that is a model of comfort and safety and an exemplary record of community involvement and social awareness, but if it languishes at the foot of the table, the chairman is in trouble. That is why there is a need for some external encouragement of best practice and a discouragement of selfish short-termism.
	The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, quite rightly drew our attention to the quote of the chairman of Newcastle United, Mr Freddy Shepherd, who said:
	"When we have 52,000 fans at each home game, the last thing we are worried about is the clubs in the third division".
	He went on to say that the time will come when the Premier League is running the whole show.
	This is not a threat, and I take on board what my noble friends Lord Newby and Lord Addington said about voluntarism, but if there were any threat of a coup d'état by the Premiership, that would cause the pressure for statutory regulation to become irresistible. People like Mr Shepherd should know that.
	The great strength of the English league system is that it is a ladder of achievement which goes deep and leaves even the smallest of clubs dreaming to dream. AFC Wimbledon is already planning its return to the Premiership; as we know, it can also go down, as have Carlisle and others.
	The alternative is a Premiership made up of one or two clubs, with about the same attraction as the Harlem Globetrotters—entertainment fodder for television. I believe that we are capable of better than that. What is needed is encouragement of best practice. We have had criticism of club chairmen, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Clarke, indicated, it is also said of them that the way to make a small fortune out of running a football club is to start off with a large fortune. For most club chairmen and club directors, it is nothing more than a labour of love.
	Because football clubs are community assets, there is a need for adequate protection for clubs against the asset strippers, money launderers and some of the mega-wealthy from abroad. If they acquired such wealth so quickly in this country, some of them would probably be behind bars rather than in a football club boardroom. I make no judgment on any particular individual. However, looking for quick-fix solutions from the mega-wealthy from abroad is extremely dangerous for football clubs. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, that any government encouragement or legislation which encourages community participation and ownership of soccer clubs is to be welcomed.
	About 16 or 17 years ago, I carried out a study for the Government about prospects for development in Liverpool and Merseyside. I was appalled at the lack of community involvement by both Liverpool and Everton. One of the first speeches I made in this House about soccer was extremely critical. Some of our greatest clubs were sited in areas of great social deprivation, relying on supporters who lived in some privation, yet the clubs seemed to show no awareness of that.
	Looking again at the record, I think that there has been a massive improvement. The FA and the clubs deserve tremendous credit for the way in which they have taken initiatives, not just in terms of community involvement but also in campaigns to kick racism out of soccer. Many other institutions could learn a lesson from football in that regard. The battle against racism has not been won, but football has shown great courage and it could go further. I would like to see clubs send multiracial task forces into schools, preaching the anti-racism cause. However, they have already done a lot.
	On agents, I agree with everything that has been said about greed. My brother, at 21, a newly qualified plumber, had as his labourer Johnny McIntyre, the man who still holds the record of scoring seven goals in a First Division game for Blackburn Rovers. He ended up as a 21 year-old plumber's labourer. Jeff Astle ended up as a window cleaner. It is worth remembering that generations of footballers were denied a proper return for their talents by an iniquitous wages system. We must be careful in what is a relatively short career not to prevent footballers earning their worth in our society. They are as entitled to take external advice as anyone else.
	On Saturday, I went to the Harvesters Football Club in St Albans, not with either of my two sons—neither of whom shows much interest in football—but with my nine year-old daughter. The Harvesters Football Club is one of the FA's community clubs that runs 23 clubs, three of them for girls. I have one last message for the FA, sponsors and others: the big market out there for soccer is women's soccer. We should not patronise it; we should encourage it. I have watched my daughter with five of her friends sitting in a circle watching their favourite film, "Bend it like Beckham". A lot of girls out there will be kept involved in sport by women's soccer.
	Most of all, the lesson of this debate has been the progress that is being made and the enthusiasm of the friends of football to encourage that best practice.

Lord Moynihan: My Lords, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, on securing the debate. He is a strong supporter of football and has, as many noble Lords said, done a great deal for the advancement of the sport, especially at grass roots level. I echo his comments on many areas, not least on the abhorrent—if occasional—and wholly unacceptable racism in football. Players and the FA are right to take racism seriously. It is utterly unacceptable inside or outside sport.
	However, the noble Lord is not alone in this Chamber in his support for football, as we have heard this evening, not least from the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, as president of the Football Foundation. He leads an organisation that contributes so much to sport in this country with great skill and enthusiasm. Additionally, I commend the Football Association for its efforts at the grass roots—be it coaching schemes, sport for disadvantaged children, women's football, as we have just heard, or indeed disability sports initiatives. The FA does that work highly effectively.
	I begin with one of those grass roots initiatives. The FA's 3 Lions coaching programme began about two years ago. Its principal aim is to offer children free after-school football coaching in FA-accredited clubs. Clubs are encouraged to forge links with local schools and to connect with schoolchildren. The schemes are administered at local level, and funding is allocated by the FA according to how many school links are formed.
	Although still in its infancy, the scheme has already reaped two distinct and important benefits. First, it offers children the kind of structured, enjoyable sport that should be a staple of school life, but is now rare indeed. Secondly, it offers participating football clubs a sustainability of membership that was previously beyond their grasp. Children who go to a club as part of the 3 Lions programme are more likely to become full members in the future.
	The scheme is a good one. Investing in local sports clubs and enabling them to provide sport for our children makes sense because sports clubs are where so much genuine enthusiasm for the game lies. That is precisely the reasoning behind our Club2School sports initiative, which we launched last week. Club2School will offer every child two hours of free coaching each week in a local sports club. That will be in addition to the target of two hours physical activity in national curriculum time. Children should be able to choose which sport they play according to local availability and sports clubs, and national governing bodies will receive funding dependent on the number of children that they attract to their sport.
	In that context, the noble Lord, Lord Addington, was right to focus on the importance of clubs. In short, we must double the amount of sport available to children without increasing the burden on our overstretched yet enthusiastic and able teachers. Instead, we should shift the responsibility for youth sport provision on to the shoulders of those who are genuinely, actively enthusiastic about their sport in our clubs. It seems eminently sensible that, wherever possible, children should be taught football by a qualified football coach, and our policy has met with widespread approval. It builds on the good practice of the FA's 3 Lions scheme. It builds on the excellent work undertaken by all those involved in coaching programmes in accredited clubs.
	In fact, the only party to remain silent on the matter are the Government, until yesterday. After cancelling the announcement on school sport which was planned for last week, the Labour Party unveiled its new school sports policy. The most widespread coverage of this policy was in today's Daily Mail, which said that the policy was just "more of the same":
	"It is a re-re-re-announcement; a rehashed, reheated stew of old promises".
	The noble Lord, Lord Pendry, was absolutely right about the huge increase in lottery money spent in sport, but let us not forget that, at the Labour Party conference in 2000, the Prime Minister stood up and announced that he would spend £750 million over three years on school sports facilities. My noble friend Lady Morris of Bolton talked of the importance of access to football pitches. That £750 million over three years should have gone towards ensuring that we had good school sports facilities. Sadly, it is now four years after that announcement, and only £40 million of the £750 million has been spent.
	What is more, the school sports partnership scheme alone is not the answer. It produces a patchwork quilt of sports provision in which the amount of sport a school offers is usually determined by the head. That can place unwanted and unreasonable burdens on competent, enthusiastic teachers, and it fails to offer many children the sporting chance that is their right. Worse still, it completely fails to make use of the thousands of volunteers in the clubs who are ready and willing to get involved.
	The policy will barely scratch the surface of many of the problems that we have talked about this evening in engaging young people in football. However, if we scratch the surface, we soon see that the Chancellor has not completely lost his parsimonious streak. Other proposals announced include a real-terms cut in the funding allocated to both Sport England and UK Sport, through which many of the government policies for the development of English football are funded. This is the first time in history that the budget for the sports councils has in real terms been cut. The right honourable Richard Caborn, the Minister for Sport, has achieved a unique achievement. The 12th Minister for Sport is the only Minister for Sport who has managed actually to reduce, in real terms, the forward budget for the sports councils and decrease the number of people who participate during his term of office.
	The Government's own statistics show the seriousness of the problem. Since 1997, participation in sport has gone down. We now have the highest rates of childhood obesity in Europe. I regret to inform the House that more than 5 million of our 8 million children do not even receive two hours of quality physical education a week inside and outside school. It is time for a major shift in sport policy for our schoolchildren. That shift should be to the sports clubs that want to provide sport for young people and need to have people coming through their doors.
	As my noble friend Lord Lyell mentioned, football, just like all sports in the United Kingdom, is massively dependent on volunteers. It relies heavily on the outstanding and undervalued contribution of those people who give their time freely to coach, referee and support local clubs. Yet worryingly, the Office for National Statistics estimates that the value of formal volunteer activity on which sport in this country depends has fallen by a staggering 26 per cent in the past eight years. People are giving up volunteering in sport, and the reason most often given by those people is the,
	"risk, fear of blame and litigation",
	the so-called compensation culture. The Government would have us believe that the compensation culture is basically a myth, but that is simply not the case, and changes in policy are needed to prevent the slow death of volunteering in sport. A series of steps needs to be taken in this context. I quote the chief executive of Sport England:
	"Take the volunteers out of sport; you take the sport out of England".
	They are simply too important to lose.
	The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester began by talking about the international perspective. Internationally, the Government need to do far more to support the football authorities in ensuring that they have influential representation on international bodies. FIFA and UEFA should be high on their list of priorities. In parenthesis, I must say that it is utterly unacceptable that the ICC may leave these shores. The Chancellor has an opportunity to raise our country's level of influence on the world stage of sport tomorrow in answering Treasury Questions on this subject. I for one will be using every opportunity in the passage of the International Organisations Bill, that starts in your Lordships' House tomorrow, to keep the ICC here.
	Our use of sport as a tool of international development is minimal. Where we employ it, we use it well. Just look at the excellent work undertaken by Garth Crooks and his colleagues in the Caribbean. Our record to date for bidding for and staging international events is unacceptable. We must place a far higher priority on working with the FA and with all governing bodies to ensure that the international federations that are already here stay and that those seeking to come to these shores receive the necessary support so to do.
	I regard this as having been an excellent debate. Politicians are most out of touch with the people whom they represent when they fail to feel and understand the way in which football and sport resonate with the public in all sections of society. Pick up your newspaper. For every page of politics there are five pages dedicated to sport. Tonight, it has been demonstrated that noble Lords in all parts of the House are very much in touch with football and the wider world of sport and feel passionately about it, for sport is nothing if not about ambition, emotion, enjoyment and opportunity.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, this has been a most interesting and insightful debate, ably introduced by my noble friend Lord Faulkner, to whom we owe a very considerable debt not just for the opportunity to debate this important issue—here I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, about the importance of sport for our communities—but also because we want the football authorities to take seriously certain football issues in which we, as representatives of the community, have a very keen interest.
	It is clear from the debate that we all recognise that football is, indeed, a complex business. I refer here to the obvious dichotomy in the modern game in which some increasingly exploit the enormous commercial benefits that they derive from success at the highest level and make increased profits through sound business models while others struggle to survive in an increasingly competitive and ruthless market. It is recognised that the game has moved away from traditional roots in the community which we want to see fostered and continued. Football attracts media attention. Therefore, debates on football take place in the full glare of publicity. They are important debates.
	Football is continually being analysed. Governing bodies and clubs are always under the spotlight. The Government's attitude to football is also under the spotlight. Football matters to the nation and therefore matters to government. Football is important. After all, it helps to deliver the Government's aims to increase participation in sport and to improve social inclusion, community cohesion and the health of the nation as set out in Game Plan, published in December 2002. Football has a high profile and is the nation's favourite game. We all recognise the extent to which millions of people—upwards of 24 million—take an interest in football. That figure is well above those for any other sport. Three-quarters of parents say that their children are interested in football. Within schools teachers identify the popularity of football, particularly among boys but increasingly among girls. Football generates an impressive feel good factor when the national side—or our leading teams representing our national interest—do well in international competition. Therefore, we recognise the importance of football in our national life.
	More than any other sport, football has the ability to engage large numbers of our people, to reach out to communities and to reach across social classes. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Addington, who I believe first mentioned this point, that a great deal of football is played at amateur grass roots level. We need to nurture that. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Faulkner for identifying that we need football to be well run at the highest national level because it needs to respect and connect to the grass roots level from which the very strength of the sport develops.
	The picture is very far from being one of gloom and doom. We recognise the considerable progress that has been made in recent years. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, identified the growing extent to which the major clubs relate to their communities and the very considerable progress they have made in that regard. The Government want to encourage that development. We want to see the development of strategies that provide the right facilities. Football clubs in Britain could follow the models that exist elsewhere in Europe and the wider world of being the focal point of wider sporting facilities than just football to which the community inevitably relates.
	If those models were adopted, we could hope to see an increase in sporting participation and sporting facilities. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, was right to stress such facilities. However, I chide him a little as it is a little rich for a member of a previous government who had an extraordinary record regarding the closure of school playing fields to berate this Government who now have the toughest policy on the control of school playing fields. We ensure that any playing space which is lost is replaced by an enhanced provision with year round facilities that improves opportunities to participate in sport. It ill behoves the noble Lord to berate this Government in that regard, particularly as he will recognise that over this past week we have announced substantial investment in, and our commitment to, sport.
	I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lyell, that football's strength is that it attracts children from all backgrounds. It enables them to engage in extremely vigorous physical exercise. I refer to the need to provide sufficient facilities in our communities. So much petty, and sometimes more serious, crime occurs on benighted estates where we have failed to provide facilities. It is essential that we address the role which sport can play in enhancing participation and communities. There has been recognition—

Lord Lyell: My Lords—

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, the debate is time restricted but I shall give way.

Lord Lyell: My Lords, the noble Lord kindly referred to me. I may have spoken in a rather tongue in cheek fashion but I referred to children of all ages. That includes myself and perhaps the noble Lords, Lord Moynihan and Lord Grantchester. I pointed out that spiritually we are all extremely young.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I am delighted to hear that. As I was foolish enough to captain the parliamentary football side at the age of 57 I give way to no one as regards having delusions of youth when one's skill has long passed its best.
	As regards pride in past performance, no one has mentioned the one thing that we should all recognise; namely, the skill exhibited in our football. The skill exhibited in the football that is played in our Premiership and at an international level is in my view substantially higher than it ever was in the past. We should recognise that. That is part of football's attraction and the reason it provides such extraordinarily gripping television. The great games constitute great experiences. I therefore hope that we recognise the strengths of the present position too. I am grateful to all those noble Lords who spoke about this; the noble Lord, Lord Jones, was emphatic in those terms, so was the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, on the extent to which we need to nurture grass roots.
	I emphasise that in the footballing community schemes, in the Positive Futures programme, in the Premier League Reading Stars, we see role models, not just in sport but in a wider form of education as well. Leading footballers show how they have mastered crucial literacy skills and have struggled with those problems in order to emphasise to young people that they must master these skills and enhance their literacy and numeracy. What better role model than a professional footballer whom they hold in the highest regard showing that he has been through the same battles as they are facing and has triumphed over them? There is a great deal about football role models which does not relate solely to performance in the field of play, but can also play its part for the good of the wider community if we can only capitalise on the good will that can be, and is often, present.
	Football can deliver a great deal more than it has in the past, although I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Pendry who emphasised the particular role that we all recognise, and in which he has played such a conspicuous part, of the Football Foundation. I will also mention the private dimension of the Barclays Spaces for Sport initiative, which also brings substantial private finance—some £30 million community sponsorship—by one of the country's leading banks in partnership with the Football Foundation at ground work. This is the single biggest investment in grass root sports by a company in the UK, and we should pay tribute to that initiative. I am glad that my noble friend raised that point this evening.
	I am also grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester for his emphasis on the extent to which football and sport can help to develop the whole individual. It is an important dimension, and we should recognise that football can both improve the health of our young people—we all recognise the problems and challenges of obesity among young people, which needs to be tackled through greater levels of exercise—and that is why I emphasise to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, that we are determined that every child shall enjoy the opportunities for two hours of sport per week. He will recognise the significant progress that we are making towards targets. We have hit certain targets in the past two years, and we are putting resources in place to ensure that those targets are raised for the participation of children in sport.
	I also agree with my noble friend Lord Faulkner that we need to think seriously about the tough issues that confront football, particularly on the way in which football is run. The Government agreed to set up the Independent Football Commission, an independent body established on self-regulatory lines. I am aware of the fact that there are critics who suggest that the IFC does not enjoy the range of powers that may be necessary for it to be as effective as some would like, but it has been going for only two years, and during those first two years we recognise the progress that has been made, and we look forward to the report on its activities in their third year.
	I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Newby—I think he was reinforced by his own Front Bench—that football does not need a statutory regulator. It certainly needs regulation; it needs a recognition of standards that it must meet. A statutory regulator could come into play only if football was in fact faced by the kind of dire crisis to which the noble Lord, Lord McNally, referred. Let us hope that wise counsels prevail, and that the Premiership figures recognise the dangers of pursuing self-interest to the point where they damage their long-term interests in any case by pursuit of too narrow objectives.
	It is not the Government's responsibility to regulate footballers, unless they break the law. It is the Government's concern to have an interest in the fact that the FA should be fit for purpose for the 21st century for the sake of the game and to ensure that the game can deliver grass roots football. We believe that this can best be achieved through a strong FA. It is therefore fair to ask, "Is the FA fit for purpose?". It is important to recognise that my right honourable friend the Minister for Sport offered his support to the FA in the troubles that it has had in recent months. We all welcome the appointment of the new chief executive, and we wish Brian Barwick well. We also recognise that it is important that the Football Association appreciates the keen interest of the Government on behalf of the wider community, that it puts its own house in order, and that it exerts the necessary authority for the good of the game and for all of us who hold the game in high regard.
	I have no doubt that on the issues with regard to governance a great deal of progress needs to be made. Football supporters are clearly exerting their pressure, a point made by my noble friend Lord Rosser in terms of the role of the grass roots and the fans. It is important that we recognise the part played by the fans. They have an important interest in the sport. Without them, the sport would be as nothing. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, identified, costs for taking families to football these days are prohibitive at the highest levels. We should welcome those grounds where they set out to identify special seats of lower cost to encourage young people to get their chance to see football at the highest level without having to meet the exorbitant costs that can obtain.
	I recognise the point made by my noble friend Lord Clark, that throughout the Football League there are an awful lot of directors and others who play their part in supporting clubs without significant material reward or even thought that that may materialise. He is right; the Football League has shown areas in which the Premiership could learn lessons, not least the question of the percentage to be spent on wage bills. It is an important guide; it is in its early days, but we recognise that it may help the finances of clubs outside the Premiership. It may be that the Premiership comes to recognise that the rather exorbitant position of players' salaries—reference has been made to newly negotiated salaries of extraordinary levels—perhaps does have to be reined in for the good of football finances.
	On the more technical point that my noble friend raised on the question of the fairness with which different football clubs are treated when they go into administration, I think perhaps I will have to write to him on that. It is a little outside the responsibility of this department. It is rather more the responsibility of the Department of Trade and Industry on bankruptcy law.
	I recognise the point that he makes, and he will appreciate that there is a particular difficulty about football as a business when it comes to the question of its debts building up, and that is that football clubs are going businesses only for as long as they play football and fulfil their fixtures. Therefore, there is a real problem for the authorities with what dramatic impact they make upon a club in mid-season because of money that is owed to the Inland Revenue, which might vitiate the long-term future of that club entirely. There are difficulties with this industry, but I recognise the point that he makes, and obviously he has a right to expect fairness in treatment.
	I also appreciate the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Newby, that it is important that there should be criteria for the directors of football clubs. We need to ensure that people who carry out that role on behalf of a significant force in the local community meet standards of proper conduct in terms of business operation. I also hope that we see, through the growth of the supporters' trusts, responsibility to the fans. In the past, clubs have often been scandalously neglectful of the very group of people to whom they owe the greatest obligation, because it is from them that they derive the greatest loyalty.
	I also welcome the fact that several noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Faulkner, emphasised that there is no place for racism in football—quite the opposite. We should recognise that football is a living example of the range of talents that our multiracial community brings through excellence in the sport. The disgraceful events that occurred when the England team was on international duty in Spain produced from the Government and the Football Association a suitably strong riposte. We hope that we are able to see the end of such episodes.
	I welcome the point emphasised particularly strongly by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, and by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, about the tremendous success in the growth of women's football. I agree with the noble Lord that the Football Association should look at its great growth potential. The extraordinary thing from the American experience is that it is in exactly that area that the most significant developments have been made. Again, ingrained attitudes may need to be overcome by administration at the top level of football, but we must look forward to progress in those terms as well.
	It has been a fascinating debate, and a difficult one to respond to, not least because everyone has made good points and has done so in an emphatic and impassioned way. Everyone therefore deserves a full response from me in every respect, which is difficult within the framework of 20 minutes. I hope that we all recognise the debt that we owe to my noble friend Lord Faulkner for introducing an important debate this evening.

Lord Faulkner of Worcester: My Lords, at this time of the evening, I do not intend to do any more than thank all noble Lords who have spoken in the debate, and I particularly congratulate those making their first-team debuts in a football debate. I think that that includes the right reverend Prelate; it certainly includes the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton, and my noble friends Lord Rosser and Lord Jones. In the case of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, it is the first time that he has worn his captain's armband with "PC" written on it, certainly in a football debate. I congratulate him, too.
	All sorts of very interesting themes have come up in the debate, and I do not intend to cover any of them now. It is interesting that the right reverend Prelate raised the issue of sin bins; perhaps he is particularly well qualified to talk about that. He went on to talk about technology for referees, but I shall resist the temptation to go down that road.
	It occurred to me during the debate that, if I am asked what the House of Lords has in common with Mr Tommy Docherty, I can say that it has more clubs than Jack Nicklaus. The allegiances of your Lordships up and down the country, into Scotland and north Wales, are very impressive, and we have enjoyed the insights brought out in each speech.
	I shall close with a speech that was not made this evening, but the words were on a note passed to me by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth as he left after the previous debate. He wrote:
	"Sorry I can't stay for your debate. In Portsmouth, the resurgence of Pompey FC has done a huge amount for the city, with spin-offs for inner city education. It's a big local issue—have fun!".
	We have had fun, and it has been demonstrated to us how important football is in British society. I appreciate the efforts that everyone has made to contribute to the debate.
	I am fascinated to know what Papers I can move for, but I do not intend to do that, so I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Motor Vehicles (Wearing of Seat Belts) (Amendment) Regulations 2005

Lord Davies of Oldham: rose to move, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 8 November be approved [34th Report from the Joint Committee, Session 2003–04].

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, the regulations amend existing regulations. They provide a revised exemption from compulsory seat-belt wearing for goods vehicle users while delivering or collecting anything. They clarify when the exemption applies to make it more understandable and to make it easier for the police to enforce. The regulations are about improving road safety, and therefore about saving lives and reducing casualties. They also make two minor changes to bring the current regulations up to date.
	In accordance with Section 14 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, the Motor Vehicles (Wearing of Seat Belts) (Amendment) Regulations 1993 provide an exemption for those using goods vehicles while,
	"engaged in making local rounds of deliveries or collections".
	It was recognised when compulsory seat-belt wearing was first introduced that those making house-to-house deliveries or collections would be inconvenienced by having to unbuckle and buckle seat belts at very frequent intervals. However, there is no definition of,
	"local rounds of deliveries or collections".
	As a result, many of those who use vans and goods vehicles—and possibly their employers as well—wrongly believe that there is a general exemption for anyone making a delivery or collection, whatever the distance they travel. Consequently, too many of them fail to use their seat belts when they are at work.
	The Government are concerned that regular surveys of seat-belt wearing carried out for the Department for Transport show that seat-belt use by van drivers is much lower than for car drivers. The last survey was carried out in October this year and shows that only 70 per cent of van drivers and 57 per cent of their passengers wear seat belts, compared to more than 93 per cent seen in the front seats of cars. We estimate that if seat-belt wearing rates by drivers and passengers in vans increased to the levels seen in cars, some 20 deaths, 240 serious casualties and 1,000 slight injuries could be prevented each year.
	In order to reduce casualties, we need to increase seat-belt use by goods vehicle users. The House debated changing the current law when the then Railways and Transport Safety Bill came before it in June 2003, when it was agreed that the existing exemption should be changed. Therefore, in accordance with Section 110 of that Act, new regulations must now express the exemption as a maximum distance that may be travelled before a seat belt has to be worn.
	As explained to the House last year, the department undertook public consultation on what that prescribed distance should be, suggesting that it should be either 10 metres or 20 metres. However, we invited views on other distances. There were 64 responses from businesses, trade associations, the police and members of the public. Inevitably there were many different views. Some people wanted no exemption at all, while others wanted a significantly greater distance than we had proposed in the consultation document.
	All the views received were carefully considered, and we decided that the distance to be specified in the regulations should be 50 metres. That was announced in a letter from the Department of Transport dated 30 September 2004 and sent to everyone who responded to the consultation. A summary of the responses to the consultation, a list of those who had responded and a regulatory impact assessment have also been made available.
	The distance of 50 metres provides sufficient flexibility for the majority of vehicle users to undertake their tasks without serious inconvenience. Seat belts today are much better than they were when seat-belt wearing first became compulsory. They are easier to use, more comfortable to wear and we believe that it will not be difficult or unreasonable for users to comply with the new requirement. However, we recognise that some vehicle users who do not currently wear seat belts will have to do so in future. The time spent undoing and doing up seat belts will increase journey times and this may have cost implications for those making frequent stops to deliver or to collect. In some cases this may be because the existing exemption has been interpreted too widely. The requirement of the new regulations better reflects Parliament's original intention and will not seriously inconvenience those who are genuinely making door-to-door deliveries or collections.
	This change is now incorporated in Regulation 2(2) of the draft order. It replaces the equivalent exemption provided for in the 1993 seat belt wearing regulations. We have also taken this opportunity to make two minor technical amendments to the 1993 regulations to replace references to the Motor Vehicles (Driving Licences) Regulations 1987, which have been revoked, with references to the current Motor Vehicles (Driving Licences) Regulations 1999. Regulations 2(3) and 2(4) of the draft make these minor changes.
	These regulations will apply throughout Great Britain and implement the new provision in the Railways and Transport Safety Act 2003, while maintaining the spirit of the original legislation. I commend them to the House. I beg to move.
	Moved, That the order laid before the House on 8 November be approved [34th Report from the Joint Committee, Session 2003–04].—(Lord Davies of Oldham.]

Earl Attlee: My Lords, I am extremely grateful for the Minister's full and detailed explanation and I am quite content with the order and its contents. I am confident that the police will sensibly implement them.
	In 1998 one of my sergeants in the TA unit that I commanded at the time was driving his civilian truck on the M25 motorway. He had an accident and was thrown out of the cab, presumably because he was not wearing a seat belt. Unfortunately, he was travelling over a flyover and did not survive the impact with the ground below. But even without such a problem, if you are not wearing a seat belt and you have a bad accident you will lose control of the vehicle when you do not need to.
	So I fully support all regulations on seat belts and I always wear one. As the Minister mentioned, seat belt compliance is only 93 per cent for front seat drivers. That is despite hard-hitting government adverts that are welcome. But it is so disappointing that we cannot move nearer to 100 per cent compliance.
	Could we do more? Could we have more road safety advertising—perhaps more advertising in prime time television, not just for seat belts, but for other road safety issues, too? I sometimes see such adverts very late at night. After all, one of the few ways that young people come to grief and a tragic, unexpected end is through a road traffic accident. I am very happy with the order.

The Earl of Mar and Kellie: My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Earl. I should declare that two members of my family drive lorries for their living, so I know who will have to comply with it. I have also consulted my stepson and was interested to hear that he and his colleagues thought that the order would specify 100 metres. Perhaps they were involved in the consultation and are awaiting our views.
	Those on these Benches have no difficulty in accepting the order as a piece of road traffic and, ultimately, criminal justice legislation—but I have a small reservation about the precise distance mentioned in the new sub-paragraph; that is, 50 metres.
	The existing definition is much too imprecise and appears to condone the non-wearing of seat belts by van drivers and second men in almost any journey where deliveries are made. Just to compound the legal myth, W-registration lorries and older do not require seat belts to be fitted. So the new order will give a much better description of the type of activity which will attract the exemption for seat belt wearing. It will mean that the driver and second man will be required to wear a seat belt at all times, except when actually making deliveries to virtually adjacent properties. This regulation will be easier to keep in spirit than in the letter of the regulation, I fear.
	When I was preparing for this short debate, I was also concerned that there seemed to be no definition available about the other substantive matter within the order; that is, the new definition of a "qualified driver", described in sub-paragraph (b), when instructing a learner in reversing manoeuvres. Will the Minister clarify what the new definition will be?
	The order will impact on many road users, many of whom will be at work. What will be the Government's approach to informing the public about these changes, or will that just be left to firms to inform their employees? Presumably those employers will have to pay for some of the vans and lorries to be fitted with seat belts—or will they?
	Finally, I also hope that the Minister will commit himself to keeping the 50 metre regulation under review. I suspect that we will be asked to amend this to 100 metres in the future. However, I am mindful that our neighbours in Norway are experimenting with the main roads, such as the E18 down to Kristiansand, having a speed limit at 70 kilometres per hour—that is 42.5 miles per hour. That experience has brought road deaths in head-on collisions down to zero.
	So, in the spirit of such experimentation from the other side of the North Sea, I am content with the order and its definition of 50 metres. I hope that the Minister will enlighten me regarding people who are teaching reversing.

Viscount Simon: My Lords, I am delighted that the 50-metre regulation has come into existence. I was one of the consultees who wanted a zero distance, so that people would not be exempted, purely on the basis that there could then be no misunderstanding whatever whether they were wearing seat belts or not. However, 50 metres is a good start.
	At the moment, Hackney carriage drivers and drivers of private hire vehicles when carrying a passenger are also exempt, but they are not exempt from being killed in a traffic accident. It is a great shame that, despite the pressure applied on that point when the issue was debated before the legislation was enacted, that issue could not be addressed. Perhaps some thought could be given to removing the exemption for such drivers, so that every driver has to wear a seat belt at all times except for those who are medically exempted. But these regulations represent a good start.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who spoke in the debate and gave broad support to the changes. I hear what the noble Earl, Lord Mar and Kellie, said about the fact that we should keep our minds open on whether we have got the figure right. The figure of 100 metres was, of course, the subject of a representation as part of the consultation—it may have surfaced there. As we said, we were going for a much lower figure in our original proposal. We settled on 50 metres as an effective compromise, which we believe will meet the necessary requirements to improve accident records, while giving some recognition that points were made during consultation.
	To the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, let me say that, apparently, the department spends £14 million on road safety publicity a year. I am mindful of the fact that, given television rates of advertising, that probably means that those adverts must be restricted to rather less popular slots than some adverts are. Some £1.5 million of that sum is spent on seat belt advertising but, of course, we could always spend a lot more. There is always the question of how one gets publicity across, and from time to time there are significant publicity campaigns on specific issues of road safety. Those are the figures, however, which show that the Government are in earnest and take the question of wearing seat belts seriously.
	I understand the point made by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee. None of us should be satisfied if there is less than 100 per cent compliance. Nevertheless, 93 per cent compliance with regard to car drivers and their passengers is probably a figure in which we would all have delighted when seat belts were first introduced, when our ambition was fixed a little lower than that, given the inevitable resistance to changing habits.
	Therefore, we might draw some solace from the fact that each generation of new drivers cannot be trained by driving instructors unless they are wearing seat belts, and diehard resistance may reduce in time. Certainly, I agree with the noble Earl that there are enough risks involved in driving a motor car without adding to them, as he instanced in his description of one particular tragic accident, by which he showed how much more danger occurs if one is not suitably secured.
	The noble Earl, Lord Mar and Kellie, asked me about the definition of a qualified driver. The 1999 regulations define qualified driver; these regulations do not change the definition in any way but ensure that the current definition of qualified driver applies—namely, that he is over the age of 21 and has been driving for at least three years.
	I hear what my noble friend Lord Simon says. He is always articulate and forceful on road safety issues, and his views need to be treated with the greatest care. Of course, I sympathise entirely with what he says, but he will recognise that there is a degree of recalcitrance. It is making the obvious point to say that compliance by van drivers would be at the same level as that of car drivers and their passengers if the will was there. However, the fact that it is significantly low and gives rise to the additional casualty figures is a measure of the difficulties and problems that we have to overcome.
	We are making some progress. I recognise that it is very unlikely that any Minister standing at this Box will ever satisfy the House that we have done everything that we can on road safety. Nevertheless, this is a step in the right direction.

On Question, Motion agreed to.
	House adjourned at thirteen minutes past eight o'clock.